Yesterday there was a big shower of snow but yeah no big deal right! Wrong, we had gridlock all over Dublin; it took over 5 hours for large numbers of people to get home. Dublin Bus cancelled services, their website went down, so where do we get our real time info when something like this happens.

Firstly I went to DublinCity Traffic Cams where it gives you live (well nearly live about 10 mins lag) views of main routes in and around Dublin. I also searched Google, again the information was not up to date some items where a few hours old. Of course we always have the radio however now we also have twitter. I have definitely found it excellent for breaking news on events happening right now. So I went on Twitter Search and put in ‘Dublin’ & ‘Traffic’ as search terms. I started following AA Roadwatch and also sent them a message asking about my route home. Didn’t get a reply but saw lots of tweets about conditions and driving times.

Long story short, couldn’t get my little car up a little hill. Wheel spin city, so thankfully the LUAS (that’s our wonderful tram system for our group members outside Ireland) was working. From Twitter I got real time information on the road conditions, traffic delays and the public transport situation. It was excellent and of huge value to me and the others in the office. I see a great opportunity there for hotels to really use this tool to keep people informed, in times like this. You would be providing valuable information to people travelling in your direction, a customer service tool for guests who have booked as well as potential guests and quite importantly shows you are part of the community.

The possible affects:
• Provide valuable information to the Twitter community and your followers
• Provide Twitpics of your hotel, your guests do. Example View from Jurys Cork during Flood
• Use a customer service tool to answer query from guests
• Increase awareness of your Hotel
• Increase followers
• Pick up Bookings – one hotel I noticed today had a ‘Stranded Offer’ great idea and very reactive to the current situation.

Now the effect of this will vary depending on Twitter usage in your locality and country as a whole. From my observations in Ireland; Dublin, Galway, Cork and Belfast have quite active Twitter communities however that is not to say Hotels outside these areas would not benefit from using it as your potential guests could live in these areas.

There is no doubt about it the weather in Ireland and the UK is horrendous at the moment and it most certainly is affecting Hotels. Having spoken with a number of hoteliers between today and yesterday, people are certainly feeling the effects and some are closing temporarily due to the volume of cancellations and problems with access.

So our advice, if your hotel is not affected and is completely accessible is to let Twitter help you get the message out there.

Facebook can be used as well however it will only update your fans, Twitter will update the tweeting world.

For more on Social Media Marketing for Hotels join our group on Linkedin.

Good luck and drive safely if you are in an affected area.