The inaugural Hospitality Social Media Summit: from content channel to commercial function
Social media now influences demand, bookings, brand value, reputation and guest relationships. Yet many hospitality teams are still structured and developed to manage it primarily as a content channel. Ahead of its inaugural edition in London, Alisa Kremer argues that closing hospitality social’s commercial capability gap has become a business priority.
Social media has quietly become one of hospitality’s most commercially consequential functions.
It can influence where somebody travels, which hotel enters their consideration set, whether they book direct, how much value they attach to a brand, what they say after the stay and whether they return.
Yet in many hospitality businesses, social is still organised, measured and developed largely as a content function.
We ask teams to produce more. Post more. Respond faster. Keep up with new formats, platforms, creators and now AI.
The more important question is whether we are building the commercial capabilities behind all of that activity.
Can the team connect paid social to demand? Can it evaluate creator investment commercially? Can it identify where AI genuinely removes cost? Can it adapt social around international source markets? Can it turn reputation and social care into a structured part of the guest relationship?
That is the gap the first Hospitality Social Media Summit was built around.
Not a content gap. Not primarily a technology gap. A commercial capability gap.
What the argument is, and what it is not
The argument is not that every social media manager needs to become a revenue manager. It is that the function needs enough commercial literacy to understand how its decisions affect demand, acquisition cost, brand value, reputation and ultimately commercial performance.
Equally, leadership needs to stop treating social as the room where content is made and start giving it a seat in the rooms where commercial decisions are made.
Much of the most current knowledge in this field sits with practitioners who have been accountable for building and delivering these functions at scale. That knowledge rarely gets written down, because nothing in the industry asks them to. When they move on, most of it goes with them.
Designing the inaugural programme
When we began designing the inaugural Hospitality Social Media Summit, we deliberately started with those commercial gaps rather than with a list of social media trends.
Day one establishes the strategic foundation: what social is there to achieve, who it needs to influence, where teams should focus and how success should be measured. It is led by Whitney Reynolds, former Global Director of Social Marketing at IHG and Kimpton, and delegates build their own strategy as she teaches rather than watching somebody describe theirs.
Day two moves into focused 90-minute working labs, each addressing a capability that increasingly affects commercial performance, each led by someone who has run that discipline at scale. Five of them show what is meant by commercial capability.
1. Revenue: turning attention into full-value demand
The Social Revenue Blueprint, led by Ben Lilly, Founder, Giant Leap Digital
Not how to do paid social, but the capability to connect attention, intent, activation and direct demand without automatically reaching for discounting.
Social generates awareness and aspiration reliably. The commercial link tends to break somewhere between that attention and meaningful demand, and the default response when it breaks is to discount. That response is expensive twice over: once on rate, and again on the brand positioning that made the property desirable in the first place.
Delegates leave with a Full-Value Demand Blueprint: priority audiences, messaging direction, activation approach and the conversion journey behind them. The capability is to create demand without defaulting to discounting.
2. Productivity: making AI deliver an economic return
AI That Saves Time: Faster Work, Lower Cost, led by Steve Hyde, Co-Founder, Push, with the Push team
Not learning AI, but knowing where automation reduces hours and cost, what stays human and how to quantify the return.
Almost every team has now experimented with AI. Far fewer have decided what it is for, which is why the common outcome is more tools and no time recovered.
The strategic question is not which AI tools to adopt, but where automation genuinely changes the economics of the marketing function. Delegates leave with a view of what should be automated, what stays human by design, the return that follows, and a pilot built to be approved rather than argued about.
3. Attention: designing content around behaviour, not output
Hooks That Hold: Creating Social Content People Stop, Watch and Act On, led by Tom Smee, Head of Social, 80 DAYS
Content itself is not the commercial capability. Winning and holding scarce consumer attention is.
Short-form video has dramatically increased what hotels are expected to produce, without increasing the amount of audience attention available to them. Output has gone up. Attention has not.
The gap is usually mistaken for a production problem, which is why the usual response is to spend more on making the content. The variable that matters is design: what earns the first few seconds of attention, what holds it, and what turns it into an action.
Your property does not need more video. It needs video people finish watching.
4. Demand markets: adapting social around international travellers
Winning Hearts Worldwide: Social for International Guests, led by Laura Ferrari, former Director of Social Media EAME, Hyatt, and Stefano Della Schiava, former Head of Nespresso Content Studio
Not simply localisation. It is the ability to use source-market intelligence, traveller motivation, language, platform and booking journey to support demand from strategically important markets.
The capability is to connect social strategy to source-market priorities, demand patterns and the commercial realities of international acquisition. Delegates leave with an activation plan for their priority markets that can be briefed internally or to an agency.
Between them, Laura and Stefano bring senior social and content experience from Hyatt and Nespresso, spanning international hospitality and one of the world’s best-known premium consumer brands.
5. Reputation: treating social care as part of the guest and commercial operation
Own the Conversation: Social Care & Reputation, led by Santiago García Solimei, former Global Director of Social Media and Brands PR, Meliá Hotels International
Not replying to comments. It is protecting reputation, recovering service failures, identifying intent and connecting digital conversations back into the property.
Comments, direct messages and reviews are among the highest-intent touchpoints most properties own, and they are typically handled by whoever has the inbox open. That is not a system, and it does not survive volume.
The capability is to treat social care as part of the wider reputation and guest experience system, with clear ownership, escalation and measurement.
Closing the gap
The inaugural Hospitality Social Media Summit is built around that transition.
Not because hospitality needs another conversation about whether social matters, but because the commercial expectations placed on the function have moved considerably faster than the capabilities, structures and measurement around it.
Over two days in London, the aim is to bring those pieces together: strategy first, then the practical systems, frameworks and decisions required to turn it into execution.
If social is expected to contribute commercially, the people responsible for it need the commercial capability, tools and organisational standing to do so. And businesses need to treat social accordingly.
That is the gap HoSS was created to help close.
The inaugural Hospitality Social Media Summit takes place on 3–4 September at Chicago Booth London, with online access available worldwide.
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