With the recent shenanigans with IMF director at the New York Sofitel, you’d wonder how bad is all this for business. I know it’s a touchy subject, this is why I have zero opinion on what happened, but more so one about how badly this will effect business for them…or if it were any hotel for that matter. The NY Sofitel has a long struggle ahead of them, but the press might eventually work out in the long run. I know it may be a little early to touch on the subject, but I thought it might be interesting to see how it’s already impacted them in both direct traffic, social media and of course the links.
I do put out my warmest regards to the Sofitel PR team, they are most likely sweating it right now trying to do damage control. If you’ve turned on a TV, read a newspaper or checked out your favorite blog you’ve most likely heard the story over and over. This is quite the scandal so some of the biggest sites on the web are out writing, linking and tweeting!
This definitely has shown to be driving some seriously hefty traffic Sofitel’s way, and most likely not for bookings at the moment! While this also might not be true for return client’s to the hotel chain because having stayed at a few Sofitel’s myself, I can say that loyalty to this hotel is something they don’t lack in. While I cannot get accurate traffic statistics, we’ll have to rely on Alexa and Compete for this post;
So how is bad press sometimes good press? Well I imagine down the road once no one cares about this in a week or two, all those thousands of links, social media mentions and branding will have gone a long way. According to my current SERPs (and checked with Scroogle), I’m seeing Sofitel just on the verge of the top 10 for “Luxury Hotel New York”. I’ll make sure to check back in on how they’re doing this a couple months down the road.
I’d really be interested to hear from them a month from now as well on how bookings are doing, but I imagine that information will never see the light of day…good or bad.
