How about meeting Fernando Pessoa? A journey into hotel brand anthropomorphism and personality on social media

Competition in the hospitality industry is fierce and hotels need to enhance guest engagement in order to remain competitive. Building brand anthropomorphism (BA) and personality is acknowledged as a marketing strategy for achieving this goal. More and more, this engagement is taking place online, with hotels’ social media playing a critical role in the process. However, it is acknowledged that there is scarce knowledge on how hotels build BA and personality in online settings. Accordingly, this research aims at examining the implementation of BA and personality in hotels adopting a qualitative approach, by focusing on the study of the case of Lisboa Pessoa Hotel (Portugal) and its use of social media for this purpose. Netnography was applied in the analysis. Results provide evidence that developing BA and personality are strategies with the potential to increase guest engagement. As implications, hotel managers are recommended to attend to the need of humanising their hotel brand. This study is one of the first to examine implementation of hotel BA and personalisation through social media.