CASE STUDY: The Adolphus Hotel

Organization: The Adolphus Hotel (www.HotelAdolphus.com) & its premier signature restaurant, The French Room. Background: The Adolphus is an award-winning luxury hotel with a golden reputation steeped in tradition in Dallas, Texas. Its premier signature restaurant, The French Room, is a 4-diamond restaurant renowned as offering one of the world’s top dining experiences.

Business Need: Connect with devoted guests while exposing the unique personality of The Adolphus to younger generations unaware of the hip luxury that awaits them upon checking into The Adolphus Hotel and also while dining at The French Room.

Social Media Solution: Create a heightened online presence at Twitter.com/TheAdolphus and on Facebook.com/TheAdolphusHotel via extremely diverse and highly interactive content focused on art, cuisine, travel, local history, pop culture and other finer things in life that appeal to the target audiences.

Business Result: A passionate following of long time guests and people experiencing the property for the first time began connecting through shared discussion. The Adolphus became one of the most followed hotels on Twitter in the world. For the first time in years, The Adolphus saw a marked increase in new guests gracing the rooms of the hotel and the restaurant.

What actually happened: David Davis, Director of Public Relations for The Adolphus for over 27 years, pours all of his talents into what is one of the most luxurious and loved hotels in the nation. When David approached Craig Scott, Managing Director, with his wishes to begin leveraging social media for the hotel, there were concerns. The Adolphus and The French Room both enjoy a highly respected, prominent reputation going back almost 100 years. Scott wanted to avoid alienating the hotel’s discerning, international client base and risk sacrificing its solid reputation. Could this luxury brand maintain a refined image if it were present on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which are typically associated with everyday wares, services, and brands?

The answer is a resounding yes!

With the help of Social Media Delivered as their social media consultants, David Davis and Craig Scott took The Adolphus down a path that few hotels – much less luxurious ones – had ever traveled before. Scott understood that in order to build relationships with new prospects, he would need to provide not just information but also a mix of entertainment and engaging content. Twitter.com/TheAdolphus serves as a platform to spread information not only about hotel happenings, but also for events happening around Dallas, allowing followers to be “in the know.”

Thanks to Davis’ long and rich tenure at the property, he enjoys relationships with incredible authors, artists, celebrities and executives both nationally and internationally. He wanted to be able to reach out to these contacts consistently in a lighthearted and entertaining way. The Facebook page allows him to do just that.  Facebook.com/TheAdolphusHotel is like an online lifestyle magazine full of “bite” sized tidbits of entertaining, historical, informative content. This social media vehicle also enables The Adolphus to showcase the unique beauty of the property via photos and videos, allowing for immediate, direct interaction from its many fans.

The Adolphus Hotel Facebook Fan Page also provides a unique business solution to an ongoing challenge – how to be competitive in a tough wedding market. For years, The Adolphus has hosted weddings of all sizes and all styles, but modern brides were spoiled for choice and were overlooking The Adolphus. But a Facebook initiative changed all that.

Each month, The Adolphus showcases a different wedding, displaying wedding photos for all to see and providing the newlyweds a bit of celebrity fame. The modern, sometimes edgy dresses juxtaposed against the hotel’s historic beauty provide striking and unforgettable images. This initiative has helped position The Adolphus as a contemporary and hip locale for Dallas weddings.

The return on risk has been invaluable. The Adolphus’s Twitter presence, representing the hotel and The French Room restaurant, has been responsible for generating an increase in brand recognition to a whole new, younger audience. The Adolphus is currently the #1 ranking hotel or restaurant in Dallas with over 7,000+ followers. It is also one of the most followed hotels in the world. The Adolphus now enjoys a revitalized reputation and has become one of the most sought-after wedding locations in Dallas thanks to its social media presence on Facebook.

The Adolphus and The French Room prove that there is a place for luxury through social media as long as you cater to the needs of the clientele in the way they wish to be engaged. The Adolphus has already been doing this in the real world since 1912 – the transition to social media was only natural.