Individual Companies Try Social Networking
Posted on May 13, 2008 by Chris DeBrusk
I was recently invited via an email from Omni Hotels to check out their new, sorta-social networking portal which they have called “Live Like a Local”. The intent is to allow anyone to upload tips on cities around the world where Omni has a hotel.
Ignoring the fact that the execution in this example is really poor (basically no content, poor SEO page optimization, etc.) I think the bigger question is whether an individual hotel brand such as Omni can hope to compete for traffic with the likes of Virtual Tourist, IGoYouGo, Trip Advisor and of course, my site TravelGator who already have thousands of attractions for hundreds of cities around the globe.
I’m guessing the folks over at Neighborhood America, the company hosting the Omni site think so as they’ve built a business based on the assumption but I’m not so sure. For specific categories I think it might be possible to get some level of audience participation in a brand, but in other areas - travel being one - where there are very established players the major brands would be better of partnering as opposed to going their own.
I’m thinking this is an experiment by Omni Hotels that is going to go nowhere.
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