Our CEO's series of articles on LinkedIn for hoteliers ("So you're a hotelier on LinkedIn") was picked up by Hospitality Maldives. View the entire magazine online at http://hosmal.com/ Want to know more about how Iconsulthotels' social & digital media services for hotels, restaurants, and tourism organizations? Click here: http://qoo.ly/3pnyb

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Publisher
Beyond Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.
M. Bageechaa
Keneree Magu
20191 Male’
Republic of Maldives
www.bynd.co.uk
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David Kotthoff MIH MHS
editor@hosmal.com
Advertising
Hassan Hisham
ads@hosmal.com
Design & Layout
Ahmed Ansam
Hawwa Sithna
info@bynd.co.uk
Print
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Contributors
Anantara Resorts
Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts
Beach House Maldives
Bert Van Walbeek
Daydots
Doug Kennedy
Dr Rick Johnson
Enda Larkin
Hassan Haneez
Jorely Mathew
Josiah Mackenzie
Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts
Lina Atkinson
Martin Kubler
Michael Saxon
MNCCI
Neil Salerno
Osvaldo Torres Cruz
Praveenkumar M.V. Gupta
Ron Kaufman
Salaam School
Six Senses Resorts & Spas
Soneva Fushi
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Steve Curtin
The Hamister Group
The National Learning Institute
Thomas Pickard
The Cover
offering an unrivalled new resort experience for
discerning travellers. Located on the pristine, lagoon-
ringed northern Haa Alifu Atoll the 35 acre island’s
powder-white beaches are complemented with an
islands are perfect for chilled out ‘Four Poster Bed’
parties or private picnics, whilst the nearby Utheem
Island, home to a Sultan’s Palace, ensures there is a
wealth of possibility to explore the traditions and virgin
beauty of the Maldives. Read more on page 39…
impre
ssum
impre
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From The Eyes If A Hotel Butler: Guests That Attract Other Guests
Service That Sticks
How Can You Turn An Upset Guest Into A Fan Of Your Hotel?
130 Marketing Ideas For 2010
The Importance Of New Employee Training
Management Training
What is Executive Coaching?
The New Reality Of Facebook Marketing
General Managers Are From Mars And Guests Are From Venus
Would You Eat It?
Firing Someone: The Painless Process
It’s Time To Seek Advice From A Hotel Internet Specialist When..
Chef’s Tales: PR Playoffs
Strategic Plans: Make Them Work
Make You Staff Suggestion Scheme Make More Sense
Last Words
Getting The Best From Your Employees
Do As I Say
No Honey, No Money, No Guests
Say The Magic Words
Overcoming The ‘All They Want To Hear Is Rate’ Mentality
So You’re A Hotelier On LinkedIn (Part1)
So You’re A Hotelier On LinkedIn (Part1)
Train Your Hotel Team To Say This, Not That
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tents
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ISSUE 27
I have been using LinkedIn for a year and
increases steadily. I actually signed up to
LinkedIn before joining any other “social
media-esque” sites and it is still a site I
check on an almost daily basis.
As with many other social media sites, the
the way you use LinkedIn, determines what
you get out of it. LinkedIn is an extremely
powerful tool, covers a wide variety of
industries and currently has over 40 million
members – that’s a lot of potential guests,
suppliers, mentors, etc.
So you’re an hotelier and are toying with
the idea to sign up to LinkedIn or have
recently joined the site but are still unsure
how to use it effectively. Here are a few tips
and tricks I collected over the past month
that should help you to get the best out of
LinkedIn – not all the points are particular
to hoteliers, so non-hoteliers feel free to
read on…
Signing up to LinkedIn:
Registering with LinkedIn is very quick and
straightforward. Just go to www.linkedin.
your details and off you go.
depending on your privacy settings, other
details will be visible to an awful lot of
people, I think it makes sense to spend a
couple of seconds double-checking that the
information you enter is spelling mistake
free and properly presented.
SO YOU RE A HOTELIER
ON LINKEDIN
(PART 1)

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You can, of course, correct most things
later, but I think it’s worth getting it right
wEIrDo cAPTITAlIsAtIoN, e.g.
names or job titles written entirely in
CAPITALS
Strangepunc.tuation–surelyyourname
is, for example, “Albert Dumbledore”
and not “Albert. Dumbledore.” or
“Albert Dumbledore..”
Spelling mistakes in job titles – What
does being seemingly unable to spell
your job title correctly say about your
work, I wonder?
network - the basics:
recommend having a quick read through
LinkedIn’s own “Ten Tips on Building a
information.
Don’t feel like you’ve got to do all of it at
once – I suggest you start with the basics
and focus on the following sections:
persona. Don’t necessarily upload your
CV picture, but make sure that the
picture you use allows your connections
to imagine you in your professional
setting. People often compare online
networking to attending a real life
cocktail party - you wouldn’t walk into
a cocktail party wearing pyjamas…
Current & past positions: In
chronological order, list your current
and past positions. For the beginning,
title, hotel/company name and the
time you served for each position. I’ll
related posts.
Education: Again in chronological
order, list the universities and schools
you attended.
Additional Information: Here’s your
chance to add links to your company,
your own website, your blog or
indeed any other website you feel
your connections might be interested
in. You can also add additional
information regarding any training
courses you took part in, awards you
or your hotel has won or anything else
related to your professional life and, of
course, you can list your hobbies and
details of memberships in professional
organisations, clubs or societies.
and can start making connections. There
are various ways of making connections
If you are using Outlook, either at work
or at home, consider downloading the
LinkedIn Outlook toolbar – a similar
tool also exists for Lotus Notes users.
Once installed, these handy widgets
will tell you who in your address book
is already a LinkedIn member and
allow you to connect with them at the
click of a button. You’ll also be able
to access a variety of other useful
LinkedIn services directly from your
email client.
You can also import connections from
your webmail or other email clients’
address books and LinkedIn will
show you who in your address book
is already registered on LinkedIn,
so you can send them an invitation
to connect. Be careful when “mass
importing” and inviting people from
your email address book – if, for
example, you have your friend’s name
saved as “My old chum Brian” in your
email address book and you invite him
to join LinkedIn and he accepts the
invitation then “My old friend Brian”
is what Brian will turn up as in your
LinkedIn connections list until you
manually correct it. Occasionally, this
leads to some amusingly (and some
embarrassingly) named users being
added to LinkedIn users’ connection
lists.
Personally, I do not like inviting people
en masse and I prefer to send out
individual invites, thus growing my
network slowly and steadily. This
approach should also avoid too many
of the invited users clicking the dreaded
“I don’t know”-button – at the bottom
of every LinkedIn connection request
a user receives are three buttons
labelled “Accept”, “I don’t know this
obvious, but there’s some confusion
in regards to the other two. Basically,
clicking “Archive” will simply archive
the invitation without telling the
person who invited you that you have
done so (there is no option to delete
invitations or messages on LinkedIn,
so archiving is the only way to get
them out of your LinkedIn inbox) –
clicking “I don’t know this user” will
do the same, but the person who
sent you the invitation will receive an
invisible “black mark” and if too many
people click “I don’t know this user” as
a response to your invitations, you will
temporarily lose the right to send out
further invitations.
When inviting other LinkedIn users to
connect, it is generally good form to
customize your invitations accordingly
so that they know why you want to
connect with them.
Try and build your network strategically
– just think of it as working towards
achieving the optimum occupancy
mix in a hotel. Start by maybe inviting
some of your colleagues from your
current job or previous companies you
worked for, then add some business
partners, suppliers and other people
you are dealing with frequently – let
your network evolve naturally and
don’t feel like you need to achieve the
world record for the highest number
of connections in the shortest space
of time.
Martin Kubler is an innovative, resourceful
and enthusiastic international hospitality
professional with operations management
properties in Europe and the Middle East.
Martin is currently working at the Bonnington
Jumeirah Lakes Towers as Director of
Operations.
www.martinkubler.com

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Fine-tuning your account settings:
The “Account & Settings” screen, which is
accessible from the top right-hand corner
of your LinkedIn homepage, provides a
useful:
By default, all your
LinkedIn connections can see your
LinkedIn users and search engines can
on or off. I do not see why you would
want to switch it off completely – after
all, networking is about being visible,
option also allows you to decide which
want to make public and which you
want to keep private.
Should you decide to activate your
ae.linkedin.com/in/martinkubler. A
on LinkedIn and looks better in your
email signature or on your business
cards.
Status Visibility, Member Feed
Visibility and Twitter Settings: A
while ago, LinkedIn introduced status
update messages, similar to Facebook
or Plaxo. The Status Visibility settings
menu option allows you to select who
will be able to see your status updates
messages. Your choices are to display
them to your direct connections
only, to your entire network (direct
connections and their connections), or
to everybody.
The Member Feed Visibility settings menu
lets you do the same for your personal
network feed, which is similar to the “News
Feed” in Facebook, i.e. it displays network
updates from actions you have performed
on LinkedIn to your connections, your
network, everybody or nobody at all.
The Twitter Settings menu option lets you
add one or more of your Twitter accounts.
LinkedIn’s Twitter integration is very well
done and lets you decide whether you want
all your tweets displayed as LinkedIn status
tagged with the #li hashtag. To keep within
LinkedIn’s business networking theme, I
prefer to only share business related tweets
there’s Twitter proper or Facebook.
Contact Settings: The Contact
Settings option together with the
other menu options available in
LinkedIn’s Settings menu, allows you
LinkedIn and in what manner. In the
what type of opportunities you are
interested in, e.g. career opportunities,
business deals, etc. To get the most
out of LinkedIn, I suggest that you
do not restrict your contact settings
too much, though you may want to
to ensure you do not receive too many
emails from your LinkedIn connections
per day.
Network Updates: This submenu
lets you decide what you want to be
LinkedIn connections’ activities – you
can adjust the settings for a variety of
activities and only select the ones you
genuinely want to read about on your
LinkedIn home-screen.
Email Addresses: I recommend
adding all your active email addresses
– this will make it much easier for
you.
Connections Browse: You can
decide whether you would like all your
connections on LinkedIn to be able to
see who you are connected to or not.
By default, you connections will always
be able to see the details of all shared
connections, i.e. LinkedIn users you
both are connected to. I prefer to show
my connection list to my network – my
network is hand built and I am proud
to be connected to a large variety of
different people. I am happy to act as
a facilitator and introduce people to
each other, so it makes sense to let
my connections see who else I am
connected to.
Photos: Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn
lets you know who has viewed your
three settings when it comes to what
traces you leave when viewing other
your full name and headline, only
“Someone in the managerial function
in the hospitality industry in the United
Arab Emirates”), or you can decide
not to show other users that you have
LinkedIn’s default setting is to only show
be extremely helpful; for example, it allows
you to follow up with people who have
SO YOU RE A HOTELIER
ON LINKEDIN (PART 2)

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ISSUE 27
057
Martin Kubler is an innovative, resourceful
and enthusiastic international hospitality
professional with operations management
-
ties in Europe and the Middle East. Martin is
currently working at the Bonnington Jumeirah
Lakes Towers as Director of Operations.
www.martinkubler.com
the last few days, you might decide to add
him/her to your network on LinkedIn or
drop him/her a quick note to see whether
there is anything of interest out there.
Other things you may want to give a
try:
There is a lot more to LinkedIn than what
I have mentioned so far. You may want to
join a group, for example. LinkedIn’s Group
Directory lists a seemingly endless number
of different groups, from networking groups
to alumni and social groups. There are a
lot of very good hospitality industry related
groups – I recommend HoteLIers as a good
starting point; it has a lot of members and
is well moderated so spam postings are
rare. LinkedIn groups are an excellent way
to tap into new networks or to stay in touch
with what is going on in the industry and
they are also a good way to hear about job
vacancies.
It’s also worth checking out LinkedIn’s
Answers, a depository of questions and
answers spread across various categories.
I have often found useful information in
answers to questions from other LinkedIn
users. Try and answer a couple of questions
every now and again, too, but don’t just
answer for the sake of answering, instead
look at it as a way to “give back” to your
industry and your connections.
Posting a question yourself can quickly
generate a good number of useful answers
from within your network as well as from
helpful in situations where I need a rough
idea what other people think about a certain
topic I’m currently working on, or when
I’m stuck for ideas concerning solutions to
problems I encounter at work.
Don’t forget to “close” questions you asked
and to rate the answers – others have
spend time to supply you with, hopefully,
useful answers and I think it’s only fair if
you take the time to close your questions
and rate the answers.
Answering questions can earn you expertise
– the user posting the question can select
several “good” and one “best” answer from
all the answers to his/her question and if
your answer is selected as “good” or “best”
you gain expertise points which show up in
your winning answer. This is an excellent
way to gain visibility on LinkedIn and can
get you noticed by other potentially useful
LinkedIn users.