What hospitality businesses should measure beyond social media likes
A simple, honest measurement framework for restaurants, hotels and villas — focused on the numbers that relate to real guests.
Likes, followers and reach are easy to report. They are also easy to misread. A video can reach thousands of people who will never visit, while a modest post seen by the right few hundred can fill a table.
This does not make social metrics useless — they show whether content is being seen and whether it resonates. But they should sit near the top of a chain that ends in something commercial.
Think in a chain, not a single number
A useful way to organise measurement is to follow the guest’s path:
- Seen — reach, impressions, profile and listing views.
- Interested — saves, shares, profile visits, website visits, menu views.
- Acted — calls, direction requests, booking-engine sessions, reservation requests, WhatsApp or Zalo messages, form enquiries.
- Converted — reservations honoured, rooms booked, revenue where you can track it.
- Returned — repeat visits, returning guests, reviews and recommendations.
Most reporting stops at step one. The most useful reporting connects at least to step three.
Measures that matter by business type
Restaurants and cafés: Google Maps calls and direction requests, reservation requests by source, review volume and rating trend, covers on targeted nights.
Hotels and resorts: booking-engine sessions and conversion rate, direct enquiries, direct-versus-OTA booking mix, review scores across platforms.
Villas and apartments: qualified enquiries, response time, enquiry-to-booking rate, listing views and saves.
Make it practical
- Set a baseline first. Without one, you cannot tell whether anything changed.
- Compare like with like. Phú Quốc is seasonal; compare to the same period in a previous year where possible.
- Ask guests. A simple “how did you find us?” question at booking or the table is imperfect but valuable.
- Keep the report short. Five numbers, what changed, why we think it changed, and what we will do next.
Be wary of certainty
Attribution in hospitality is messy. A guest might see a Reel, check Google Maps, read reviews and walk in two days later. No tool captures all of that perfectly. Good reporting is honest about what is known, what is estimated and what is unknown.
That is how we report at ELEVEN ELEVEN — and if you would like help setting up measurement that reflects real guests, get in touch.