The Woodlands Resort in Houston, Texas, discovered the power of social media last week, after it honored an unusual request from one of its customers.
When booking a stay at the property, Dustin Wray had filled out the “comments or special request” field by asking for three individual M&Ms candy pieces and for a photo of bacon.
In good spirits, the hotel went ahead and honored the request.
When Wray shared the experience online with its friends, it went viral. His photos have since been viewed more than 200,000 times, eventually making the homepage of social network Reddit. Local and international newspapers and radio stations have picked up the story, including the front page of Yahoo News.
The hotel was so happy with the free publicity that it has offered Wray a complimentary future trip, according to Wray’s Facebook page.
This story reminds us of something industry consultant Brian Solis said in a recent Tnooz interview about digital marketing for hotels:
“If you know that today’s connected consumers are going to share things from their trip on social media anyway, you might as well give them experiences worth sharing.”
Even if that includes M&Ms and bacon.