International Five Star Hotel Brand Communication In The Social Media Context

International five-star hotels have been in the Chinese market for more than 35 years.Nowadays,the competition among different hotel brands is also in fierce.In order to break out of the competition,under the continuous development of social media,brand communication research in the hotel field is becoming increasingly important.It has certain reference significance for shaping hotel brand,enhancing customer loyalty and optimizing theoretical research of hotel brand communication.Currently,in the context of social media,many international five-star hotels have established their own official accounts on different social platforms for brand communication.Therefore,this paper selected five official we-chat public accounts:InterContinental Foshan,Crowne Plaza Guangzhou City Centre,Hilton Zhoushan,Kempinski Hotel Changsha and Pan Pacific Xiamen as samples.Through participant observation,in-depth interview and text analysis,from five aspects of theme culture and setting,communication content,communication channel,communication effect and audience characteristics of the five official we-chat public accounts,and combined with integrated brand communication theory,to investigate the current brand communication situation of international five-star hotels in the context of social media,discuss the existing difficulties,and finally get the communication strategy.during the period of June 1,2021 to May 31,2022,Therefore,through research,this paper has the following findings:1.Five sample hotels all possessed their own brand guidelines and follow their rules for brand management.In the hotel official we-chat public account column design,is full used of its fast and comprehensive sharing function,conducive to the rapid increase of hotel membership application.However,column design due to excessive pursuit of the hotel sales effect,is lack of attention to the interaction with members of the information sharing,ignoring the integrated transmission of we-chat public number column fast convenience and member interaction.2.In terms of the communication content of the we-chat official accounts,it is found that the releasing frequency of the five hotel official we-chat official accounts during the one-year investigation is under the rule of 4 articles per month stipulated by the we-chat Official Account.And the brand promotion and product marketing are realized by combining the functions of the we-chat shopping mall.In addition to hotel product sales,it also contains brand cultural content and O2O communication layout,in order to achieve brand value resonance and emotional connection with users,improve user satisfaction with online service experience.However,from the content compilation,color selection and picture analysis,it is found that the implementation of brand standards is uneven,and the hotel brand communication strategy organization staffs are insufficient,which makes it difficult to bear the workload in the context of social media,and the quality of brand communication content is poor.3.From the characteristics of communication channels of we-chat public accounts,it is found that the maximum number of promotion comes from conversation channels.It can be concluded that the more followers,the more times of pushing articles.Secondly,the most times of promotion is we-chat opening sharing channel,which is to confirm that we-chat has increased the enthusiasm of users to take the initiative to spread information.In the era of Web3.0,the integration of social media channels has become one of the important ways for hotel brand communication,as well as one of the important ways for users to split and influence their access to hotel brand information.However,due to the increase of social media platforms,there will be a lack of targeted communication plans and poor communication effect during the hotel’s brand communication.4.Using Qingbo WCI index to calculate and analyze the communication effect of the content of articles in the we-chat public accounts of five sample hotels,combining reading index,liking index and WCI index,it is found that the articles containing promotional information and interactive activities have the best communication effect.It also can be found that the hotel neglects to analyze the communication effect of articles on the we-chat account and make corresponding communication strategies.5.Through the analysis of the characteristics,preferences and interactions of the audiences,it is found that most of the articles are combined with the characteristics of "Get the Best Deal" of the audiences to promote the hotel’s sales promotion.In addition,followers showed a positive attitude towards interactive activity articles,but the number of such kind of articles were very small.Meanwhile,the sample hotels all ignored user comments and made analysis of comments.Finally,after this study,six suggestions are as follows:1.Based on the hotel brand concept,producing high-quality communication content,personalized,connecting to hot spots and brand linkage innovation content;2.Building a team of high-quality brand communication talents.Maintaining the ability of social media brand communication operation of relevant talents from recruitment to on-board,and increase the cost of equipment purchase and publicity expenses.4.Integrating the hotel’s social media communication channels.Producing targeted communication content.Launching online and offline joint activities and investing on the social media platforms.4.Organizing the analysis of the hotel’s communication effect and conducting the sharing meeting.5.Closing to the audience value resonance,distinguish the type of followers,pay attention to interactive activities and emotional connection with the followers.6.Establishing the concept of information crisis,ensure the correctness of communication content and establish public relations mechanism.