Hospitality Doctor
Max Hitchins
WhatsApp can be a great marketing tool
Here are some suggestions on how you might use WhatsApp in your place of business. First thing to do is involve your young staff in a staff meeting for the purpose of setting up WhatsApp for you. Here are two ways to use WhatsApp that immediately come to mind: • Footy: Many pubs feature football tipping competitions. WhatsApp can provide you with a wonderful platform for discussions amongst footy fans. Once WhatsApp is set up you can suggest a ‘footy fan night’ in your pub each Monday. Maybe you can have a football passing competition on the Monday nights. Make sure you take pictures and videos and post them to WhatsApp. Maybe invite some retired footballers to attend. Perhaps some complimentary snacks to attract their attention. • Horse Racing: Many pubs have patrons who absolutely love their horse racing. They love to reflect on the performance of various horses, jockeys, owners or trainers. Perhaps on a Thursday or Friday evening you might put some complimentary snacks on the bar to encourage them to attend your weekly racing previews. Your questions, queries and quandaries probably wrap around “How do I set up a WhatsApp group,”? It is incredibly easy. Rather than include details in this article I suggest you do a Google search for “How to set up WhatsApp group” Even quicker - ask a teenager or one of your staff to show you how to do it! You might check out the WhatsApp Business application. It is built on top of WhatsApp Messenger and includes all the features you rely on sauce as the ability to send multimedia, free calls, free international messaging, group chats and off line messaging. I welcome any comments or suggestion on how you are already using WhatsApp or how you intend to use it. More on this in the next edition.
WhatsApp began in 2009. By 2012, it had 100,000,000 users. Facebook (now Meta), quickly realised its potential and bought WhatsApp for $19 billion (US) dollars in 2014. At that time WhatsApp had 450,000,000 active users. Today, with over 2.24 billion global users WhatsApp is the most used instant messaging application. It has 737,000,000 more users than the second place holder ‘We Chat’. Over one billion messages are exchanged on WhatsApp every day. Many people already use WhatsApp to stay connected with their family and friends. It is brilliant for doing this and allows dialogue between people wherever they may be around the world. You can easily share pictures, news clips, videos, comments, stories and make phone calls via WhatsApp.
So, how can YOU capitalise on this incredible success of WhatsApp and turn it into a ‘winner’ for you and your Hospitality business? Well, I can immediately recognise the benefit and opportunity of connecting and linking people to your business by involving them and making them feel part of your business. When we operated a hotel in Bondi Junction, throughout the 1990’s, we achieved this ‘connection’ by having murals of our customers throughout the hotel. People were pleased and proud to come into the hotel (and bring their friends) because ‘their faces’ were in the murals. As a result we increased the trade by around 800%.
Max Hitchins - The Hospitality Doctor w: HospitalityDoctor.com.au e: max@hitchins.com.au t: 0419 53 63 63
53 Tasmanian Hospitality Review April/May Edition
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