Las Vegas Social Media Review Take Aways

1. Luxor was the winner with an A+ in Social Media, although, still lacking a Facebook fan page. Correction: Luxor has a Facebook page!
   
2. Venetian was the winner with an A+ in SEO.
3. Only Luxor & Stratosphere have a corporate blog (astonishing).
4. The Luxor scored an A+ with a corporate blog, twitter account and MySpace page but the other MGM MIRAGE Property "MGM Grand" did not = which leads me to believe that each MGM MIRAGE property has its own PR & Marketing department making their own decisions. This good or bad.
5. Most, if not all hotel "dance clubs" or lounges have a social media presence (especially on MySpace and Facebook) = which leads me to believe that either the "dance clubs" are under different ownership and management or their marketing/Promo department is of younger demographics that pushes social media.
6. Hotels such as the Riviera, Sahara, Rio, Fitzgerald's, Hooters, Red Rock have virtually no official social media presence. This could be due to older, less flexible management with an inability to change or add social media marketing tactics to their marketing arsenal.
7. The Venetian rocked both Social Media and SEO grades. The Venetian marketing & PR department is very Internet "aware" and they "get it". They show up #1 in Vegas hotel Google searches = this is due to their online presence (Facebook, MySpace pages) that helps in organic search rankings. They also participate in PPC for the words Las Vegas Hotel(s) and much more.
8. Las Vegas hotels (in general) seem to be a little behind in the Social Media marketing realm. This surprises me as Las Vegas is built around entertainment.
9. A few of the hotels are owned under one umbrella corporation, yet the use of Social Media is erratic at best. Not practicing a unified online marketing strategy.
10. Planet Hollywood is by far the best Facebook fan page built by a Vegas hotel. Not only is it updated frequently, they use the fan page medium for special promotions and hotel room discounts.

Las Vegas Hotel/Casino Social Media Review Update

I've been side tracked by high priority projects, biz trips, and various deadlines. This review is on-going and still in progress. It seems that most of these Casinos & Hotels (media relations) are not quite up to speed with the Web 2.0 tools or even blogger relations. Most of my emails and phone calls have been unanswered. This may be due to lack of interest in receiving FREE exposure and promotion. I just think that most of these hotel/casinos run very traditional marketing programs. I did, however, receive input and responses back from a few of these companies that recognize the importance of blogger relations in this new online marketing medium. To those companies that contacted me I give "kudos" and it will show up in my upcoming review. For those hotel/casinos that passed on my invitation, I will go ahead and research the following:

-I will make use of my various search tools and check if they have any type of social media sites up and running.
-I will measure the Twitter "buzz" on various days & nights to check how popular they are.
-I will use my LinkedIn contacts and try going that route to dig up online marketing info.

This is harder than I thought. I might scale the review back a bit and post. Then circle back around and ask the Hotel/Casinos to comment. Then I will rev the review.

Las Vegas Hotel/Casino Social Media Review Primer

I'm finally putting together my Las Vegas Hotel/Casino social media review. In this review I will contact 5-10 Hotel/Casino's in Las Vegas and ask them the following questions:

Do they have a Social Media Strategy & how responsive is their PR communications with Bloggers?

What Social Media tools are these companies using? i.e., Tweeter? Podcasts? Video? Advertising on social media sites?

Which Social Media sites are they using to promote their Brand?

How do they measure success?

I will take the first five (5) companies to respond back to me. I will contact them (PR department) first by email, then if they don't respond, by phone. Scoring will be based on the A,B,C,D,F grading system. I'm curious to see if this industry fully embraces the web/PR 2.0 environment. Hang tight people, the review is coming!