Revealed: how hotels pulled highest rank on social media

Vector illustration of a set of hand drawn watercolor painted basic emojis
By Hannah Edensor


Social media is pretty huge when it comes to sharing your experiences with a brand, like for example, an airline. From using video to snap a passenger being dragged off the plane to chatting directly with brands via Twitter, all the kids are using it nowadays.

So what exactly are they saying about the various travel industries? And how do they feel about them?

Well, thanks to a new study from Brandwatch into Twitter users’ emoji habits, we now know which brands garner the most number of positive little smiley faces.

Brandwatch apparently examined six billion emojis during the study. On average, 75 per cent of the emojis on Twitter are positive and 25 per cent are negative.

Interestingly, of all the industries – fashion, food, tech, you name it – it was the mighty hotel industry that had the most positive emoji stats on social media.

Brandwatch said ?  hotels lead the way due to reward schemes, positive customer experiences, and great customer service.

Hotels clocked up 82.5 per cent positive emojis and just 17.5 per cent of negative ones. This category was followed by the likes of clothing, booze, technology and cars.

Poor old airline industry came in way down at #17, with 69.9 per cent of positive emojis and 30.1 per cent negative. According to Brandwatch, ?  airlines also perform badly due to missed connections, lost luggage, poor booking experience, and canceled flights.

Of all the top 50 brands that garnered the most positive emoji engagement, aside from Virgin Atlantic, hotels were the only travel brand to crack the list, with names like InterContinental, Hilton, Marriott and Four Seasons.

Brandwatch stated that InterContinental and several other hotels generate positive engagement due to user-generated content.

And now for some sum-ups of the emojis themselves, how much they were used, and how travel brands rated differently.

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“We now live in an attention economy through social media. Brands want my attention and I want brands attention all through the lens of a mobile phone. It’s getting faster and shorter and anything that can save me time (and money),” said Timothy Hughes, CEO and Co-Founder at Social Experts.

“Enter the Emoji stage left. Love them or hate them, they are a more efficient way of communicating. How much time has the ‘thumbs up’ emoji saved us all?

“This report proves they are not going away … but could I have written this all in emoji? Not yet, but it’s a matter of time.”

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