Why Hotels and Restaurants Should Start Using Pinterest – TODAY

After having introduced features that structure pins about recipes, online shopping and articles during the last year Pinterest launched a new feature called Place Pins this week. This new feature serves as a map-enabled Pin, allowing any user to allocate a location to any image laying out the Pins on a Pin Map.

Some travel related Pinterest figures:

A. Travel is ranked #9 in the Top Ten for any categories in Pinterest (rjmetrics.com)

And according to Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann during this week´s launch event for Place Pins:
B. 1.5 million travel-related Pins per day
C. 750 million travel-related pins overall

The new solution is destined to support Pinners in their trip planning process or create travel activity guides on specific destinations, adding useful functionality to activities already done by many Pinners today.
So far these pins would have shown like any other content on the typical tiled boards, now they will be shown on specific board maps. With more than three-quarters of Pinterest’s traffic coming from mobile, the solution is available not only for Web users, but as well for mobile access via Android and iOS.

Here an example screenshot for an ‘Expat´s Guide to Hong Kong’ provided by Pinterest:

Just not to reinvent the wheel, Pinterest decided to partner with Foursquare, Stamen and MapBox for their new map feature. Additional background data for the Pins is also integrated from partners like Airbnb, Yelp and TripAdvisor.

So here´s what users can do with the new Place Pins feature according to Pinterest:

Create stunning, interactive maps on your boards by adding places to your existing and new Pins or use Place Pins to save your favorites spots.

Example: Some of the greatest hotels & resorts selected by opensmjle on Pinterest

Place Pins come with additional details directly on the Pin, such as homepage linkage, street address and phone number. That way users can easily look up the necessary information whilst on the way to a location, before starting the evening or in preparation of a weekend excursion. Even looking up directions to places right from the Pins is possible according to Pinterest – at least on mobile! Users may send boards as well to their friends with a couple clicks, navigating them to the meeting point on the go from their mobile devices.

Example: The Best Burgers & Brews in the Big Apple

Not at your desk? Bored sitting in the tube or taxi? No worries Place Pins are available not only for web access, but as well via mobile devices. Users may add and check-out places from almost anywhere. Specifically whilst traveling users may take their Pins with them navigating unknown territory of a foreign city or strolling through a park in their hometown.

Example: A Local´s Guide to Paris

Here some first spontaneous thoughts by opensmjle:

I. Guided Tours – close by
Why not provide your guests with a guided photo tour surrounding your property all being available on Pinterest and starting / ending at your hotel lobby? Always good to provide valuable information to your guests, but not talking too much about yourselves all the time, right?

II. World or Regional Tour for Hotel Groups
You could create a tour from one of your hotels to the next one highlighting the properties, specific amenities such as special drinks, lunch offers or excursions to interesting sites close by your hotels. You could even go a step further and promote a specific ‘Hotel Group Pinterest Tour’ package…why not?

III. Upselling via Highlighted Treatments
You got a spa or health center on site? Why not highlight this with specific photos of the different treatments available? Kind of an online walk-through of your premises for guests being on site whilst sitting in the hotel lobby, at the bar or during breakfast. Or even in preparation of an upcoming stay by highlighting and linking this information in your pre-stay communication.

IV. Video Tours
As Pinterest supports as well video content why not even go a step further and use short videos on the Place Pins instead? Again you could use visual storytelling to introduce your conference site, pool area, club area or anything specific at or surrounding your property in short videos instead of images.

There are certainly many more creative ideas on how to provide snackable content for your guests and fans in a visual way. The goal always should be to provide the right content for your guests creating engagement not only on Pinterest, but as well via sharing this information with your further social media access points.

Already using this feature? Let us know when you started and we will be happy to share the bet practice examples here on our blog…

Not sure how to get started with this or don´t even have a Pinterest account for your business? Contact us via hej@opensmjle.com for more information and creative ideas…happy pinning!

Visit our opensmjle Pinterest account under:
http://www.pinterest.com/opensmjle/

More information under:
http://allthingsd.com/20131120/pinterests-latest-effort-to-get-people-offline-helping-them-save-and-map-places/

Help on the Pinterest maps:
https://en.help.pinterest.com/entries/28558547#aboutourmaps

Help on using Place Pins on iPhones:
https://en.help.pinterest.com/entries/29627147-Place-Pins-for-your-iPhone

How to integrate a Pin It Button into your website:
http://business.pinterest.com/widget-builder/#do_pin_it_button