Foursquare: what a better tool for hotel disintermediation?

Like all new applications, also Foursquare had to wait some time before the right of being recognized as a useful business tool, not only for playful activities, but also for companies in all markets, trying to keep up with the times, using new technologies.

Perhaps it was too premature talking about tourism and hospitality industry geolocation until a few months ago, when Foursquare has become a real tool for doing business. Until then, in fact, companies' branded pages were manually created by a dedicated department and, obviously, only those big companies with a great-sounding names were successful. 2011 also coincides with the automation of this process of creating business pages in the self-service method, so anyone can have a professional Foursquare page by following a few simple steps.

While remaining faithful to the idea that Foursquare has not yet been well understood in the Tourism industry and it is doing so much work to take root in it, is good to think that such social geolocation netowrk should be considered almost like all the others.

Why almost? Because, in my opinion, it is even better! It's true that the same information is already present on your official channels, such as your website, your blog, Facebook and Twitter, but everything that you post on Foursquare is strictly location-aware, directly accessible from Mobile, and therefore particularly suitable to create real-time interaction.

Initially I thought that Facebook Places and Facebook Deal (what happened to it?) would have replaced Foursquare, which has exceed expectations.

After several check-in and check-out, I finally convinced myself. And for those who have not done it yet, now it's time to approach this channel and begin to study it to understand that:

• with the growth of the mobile applications, geolocation will be the future for many activities, especially for tourism
• a "social" channel and a heavily geolocation based tool is the best instrument for getting disintermediated from OTA
• Badges and gratitudes methods create a strong bond between the company / hotel and client: loyalty!
• recent partnership between Foursquare and Groupon paves the way for some interesting online promotion for your hotel
• it is important to assert its "Venue" (as defined on Foursquare) namely its position on the map... as with Google Places
• location-based social networks like Foursquare allow totally free online promotion and generate an important word of mouth for your Brand
• you can reach the entire Foursquare community with advices and check-in, besides to post the direct link to your official website

For somebody it is soon to hear about Foursquare as part of its tourism promotion but, honestly, as it often happens on the web, it's already too late!

Madeep.com