There is one hotel in Oxfordshire that punches way above it’s weight in terms of Twitter.  It is the Fallowfields Hotel in Kingston Bagpuize, a small family run 10 bedroom country house hotel with 12,000 followers on Twitter.  To put this number in perspective,  Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir, the much more famous 2 Michelin star  restaurant and 32 bedroom country house hotel also in Oxfordshire has only just over 2000 followers so the achievement of Fallowfields cannot be underestimated.

Fallowfields does have something that most other hotels do not have...a man who is determined to wring every drop of value out of Twitter wth a passion which matches his passion for sustainable food, wine and raising rare breed livestock.  Fortunately running his hotel allows him to indulge all these passions but when it comes to Twitter, Anthony Lloyd appears to be a rare breed himself.  Clearly the hotel has a story to tell and now it has a group of 12,000 people who are interested in that story.

I was fortunate to spend a sunny morning with Anthony to look at the hotel and the farm and meeting all manner of beasts including a Tamworth boar named Thriller and some beautiful Dexter cattle. The hotel operates a "field to fork" regime with not only meat coming from the farm but also pesticide-free produce grown in the massive kitchen garden. Once we established that yes, the hotel did indeed have a story to tell I was eager to find out how Anthony used Twitter to tell that story.

Anthony and I agreed that there is no better time to use Twitter.  In the absence of established case studies, the competition are still dithering about whether this route to market is of true value or not and in the meantime they are losing valuable ground to those, like Fallowfields, who are early adopters.  Anthony is convinced that Twitter alone has added at least £100,000 to his bottom line during the last 12 months which more than enough justifies the couple of hours each day that he spends managing the system.  This is the rub really, although twitter is a free service, it does require regular and sustained attention if a hotel really wants to see tangible benefits. 

Amongst the 12,000 followers there are those that are interested in different aspects of the hotel whether that is sustainable living, lifestyle, farming, rare breed livestock, kitchen gardens, Oxford itself, country house hotels, wedding venues or fine dining.  By investing his time determining who these followers are and why they are following the hotel, Anthony can ensure that he engages his market specifically in their area of interest . Anthony probably spends 7 or 8 hours a week on Twitter but proportionately, the cost of this is significantly less than the income that this time generates. Anthony sees it as Twitter’s job to deliver traffic to his website where they are then able to convert this interest into sales.  As his Twitter follower base has grown so has his website traffic and direct bookings.  It must be a pleasure not to have to share this income with an intermediary.  For independent hotels in particular, this route to market enables them to compete in an equal playing field with hotels that are part of larger consortia or chain. In fact, independent hotels have the distinct advantage of being able to have a voice or be part of the conversation which would always be diluted when a central marketing department needs to be involved in determining any ‘output’.      

Anthony was also able to example how Twitter worked for him when planning a ‘bangers, beer and mash’ event to celebrate the Royal Wedding.  The idea was to do something to engage the local community and Anthony had a surplus of pork sausages from his farm pigs. He opened the idea out to Twitter and within minutes had secured the commitment of a local brewery, magician and falconer to get involved.  What took less than an hour in this case would’ve taken a lot longer to arrange if twitter did not exist.  

This just goes to show you that Twitter needn’t just cost you time but can also save you time...leaving you with more time to feed Thriller, the Tamworth boar! 

If you do want to follow Anthony at Fallowfields, his Twitter is @Fallowfieldsuk and mine is @GrantAppleton