Travelodge uses Twitter to promote its offerings

Budget hotel chain Travelodge is set to use Twitter to inform customers of new offers, hotel openings and job opportunities.

The move comes just a few weeks after the company appointed Charlie Herbert as its first ecommerce director, a new position overseeing the marketing and IT functions to make the web the “core” of the business model.

More than 85% of Travelodge reservations are made online and Herbert says that the move to begin communicating with customers via the social messaging service “makes sense”.

“It’s an instant, efficient and modern way of interacting with our customers,” he adds.

The launch of the Twitter page is accompanied by a pricing “reward” with a £10 discount for Travelodge “followers”.

According to online trend monitor Hitwise, Travelodge is among the companies benefiting most from web searches for travel vouchers through sites such as myvouchercodes.co.uk.

Other hotels are using Twitter in a similar way and are even using it to find guests, using the general search function to locate questions such as “need a hotel in London for the week of… any ideas please?”

Twihotels was also launched this month – the first “hotel specific” application for Twitter.

The idea is that people register for the site, input their hotel requirements and Twihotels will alert the prospective guests’ followers who can then follow up the request.

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