I get asked about X (the platform formerly and forever known to me as Twitter) more than almost any other channel, and the question is always some version of the same thing: “Is this thing dead, or am I missing out?” Usually it comes from a hotelier who set up an account in 2014, posted a few sunset photos, and hasn’t logged in since the password reset email expired.
So let me give you the answer I give every independent and boutique operator who asks me, because the honest version is more useful than the cheerleading version you’ll get from a social media “guru” who wants to sell you a content calendar.
X is not where you’ll win bookings. But it can be a genuinely useful tool for three specific jobs: real-time guest service, riding the buzz around local events, and building relationships with travel press. If you can do those three things, it’s worth a slice of your week. If you can’t even commit to checking it once a day, close the tab and go fix your Google Business Profile instead. I mean that literally.
First, the honest part: what X is bad at for hotels
Let me clear the deck. I’m not going to pretend this platform is something it isn’t.
X is bad at discovery for hotels. Nobody is sitting on X searching “boutique hotel near the convention center” the way they search Google or, increasingly, ask an AI assistant. The organic reach for a small account is brutal, and the days when a clever tweet would reliably go semi-viral and send you a wave of traffic are mostly behind us. The algorithm rewards accounts that post constantly and pay for reach, which is not a game a four-person front desk team can win.
It’s also bad at driving direct bookings on its own. I’ve never once seen X be the channel that flips someone from “browsing” to “booked.” That’s not its job. If you’re hunting for the channel that recovers margin from the OTAs, that work happens on your own site through pricing, trust signals, and a booking flow that doesn’t make people rage-quit. I wrote up the actual arithmetic of that in our book-direct math piece, because once you see what a 15 to 25 percent OTA commission costs you per stay, you stop wasting energy in the wrong places.
So no, X is not a booking engine. With that out of the way, here’s where it actually pulls its weight.
Job one: real-time guest service (this is the whole ballgame)
If X is good at one thing for hotels, it’s this. People complain in public, in real time, on X. They always have. A guest who would never call the front desk will absolutely fire off a tweet at 11pm tagging your handle because the room next door is having a party and nobody picked up the phone.
That’s not a problem. That’s a gift, if you’re watching.
Here’s the mental shift: the mentions tab is your real product on X, not the compose box. Most hotels have it backwards. They obsess over what to post and completely ignore the person trying to reach them. A fast, human, slightly-too-honest reply to a frustrated guest is worth more than a hundred polished posts about your spa.
A few rules I drill into clients:
- Reply fast, in public, then take it private. “So sorry about the noise, [first name] — I’ve sent security up and I’m DMing you now to sort the room.” Public acknowledgment shows everyone watching that you respond. The fix happens in DMs.
- Never argue in the replies. You will lose. Even when you’re right, you look bad. De-escalate, own it, move it to a channel where you can actually solve it.
- Screenshot the wins. When you turn an angry guest into a happy one, that thread becomes social proof. You don’t even have to brag about it — people watching draw their own conclusions.
The fastest reputation repair I’ve ever seen wasn’t a five-star review campaign. It was a hotel that replied to an upset guest within four minutes, comped a drink, and turned a public complaint into a thread where the guest came back and said “honestly, best service recovery I’ve had in years.” That thread did more for them than a month of posting.
This service angle ties directly into your broader reputation, which feeds everything else you do online. I treat X monitoring as one node in a wider content and reputation system, not a standalone thing. The reviews you earn, the complaints you defuse, the tone you set in public — it all compounds.
The value of X for an independent hotel is almost entirely defensive and relational, not promotional. You’re there to catch problems before they metastasize and to be a real human when someone reaches out. If you measure X by likes, you’ll quit in a month. Measure it by how fast you catch and fix the things that would otherwise become a one-star review.
Job two: local event tie-ins and city buzz
This is the fun part, and it’s where being an independent actually beats the big chains. The brands can’t move fast. You can.
X is still, despite everything, the place where a city talks to itself in real time. Conferences, festivals, marathons, a surprise concert announcement, the local team making a playoff run, a heat wave, a road closure — it all surfaces on X first. For a hotel, that’s a steady stream of relevance you can plug into, as long as you’re paying attention.
A few ways I’ve seen this work without being cringe:
- Be the helpful local, not the salesperson. When a big conference comes to town, post genuinely useful stuff: where to grab coffee before the keynote, which entrance has the shorter line, where to find quiet to take a call. You become a known, friendly account. The booking comes later, indirectly, because you were useful first.
- Tie into recurring events you can own. If there’s an annual festival three blocks away, become the account that knows everything about it. Year over year, you build a small reservoir of authority around that event.
- Respond to the weather and the chaos. Flights cancelled because of a storm? “Stranded at the airport? We’ve got rooms and we’re 12 minutes away — DM us.” That’s not spammy. That’s a genuine offer at the exact moment someone needs it.
This local-relevance muscle is the same one you’re flexing on Google. The signals overlap more than people realize — being a visibly active, plugged-in local business reinforces the trust signals that matter for your local SEO and Google Business Profile. I go deep on the GBP side in our Google Business Profile playbook, and honestly that’s where I’d start before X if you only had time for one. But the two feed each other.
Job three: travel press and writer relationships
Here’s the one nobody talks about, and it might be the most valuable use of X for a boutique property.
Travel journalists, freelance writers, and the people who run “best hotels in [city]” roundups are still very active on X. It’s where a lot of them gather sources, complain about deadlines, and — crucially — post calls for input. You’ll see things like “Working on a piece about boutique hotels in the Southeast, who should I talk to?” go by constantly. If you’re following the right people, you can be the first reply.
This is slow, relationship-based work, and it does not scale, which is exactly why it’s worth doing. A genuine connection with a writer can lead to coverage and a link from a real publication, and those links carry weight that no amount of posting ever will. That’s the entire premise behind our PR and authority links work — earned mentions from places that matter.
How to actually do it:
| What to do | Why it works |
|---|---|
| Follow local and regional travel writers, editors, and tourism boards | You see their requests and their interests before you ever pitch |
| Reply with something useful, not a pitch | You become a known name, not another inbox they ignore |
| Share their work genuinely | Writers notice who amplifies them; it’s a small world |
| Watch for “source needed” and roundup calls | These are open invitations to get featured |
| Offer a real, specific angle, not a generic press release | ”We just opened the only rooftop bar in the historic district” beats “we have great amenities” |
The reason this matters beyond a single article: those earned mentions increasingly show up when AI assistants answer travel questions. When someone asks an AI tool “where should I stay in [city],” it’s pulling from the wider web — the articles, the roundups, the places you’ve been mentioned. Being talked about in credible places is becoming its own ranking factor in a world I dig into in our brand mentions and LLMs work. X relationships are one quiet input into that whole machine.
So when is X actually worth a small team’s time?
Let me make this concrete, because “it depends” is a cop-out.
X is worth it if:
- Someone on your team can realistically check mentions once or twice a day. That’s the floor. Below that, you’re better off not having an account that looks abandoned.
- Your city has an active local scene on X — events, press, conversation. Some markets are lively; some are ghost towns. Spend a week lurking before you decide.
- You genuinely enjoy the back-and-forth. The best hotel accounts on X have a human voice because a human who likes it is running them. You can’t fake that.
X is not worth it if:
- You’d be doing it purely to post promotional offers. That’s shouting into a void, and the void does not book rooms.
- Nobody can commit to monitoring. An ignored mention is worse than no account at all.
- You haven’t yet nailed the basics: your Google Business Profile, your direct booking flow, your core site visibility. Those come first, every time. If your own website is losing the search results for your own hotel name to the OTAs, fix that before you tweet — I explain why that even happens in this piece, and it’s a far bigger leak than anything social can patch.
A minimal, sane X routine
If you’ve decided it’s worth it, here’s the lightweight rhythm I recommend, so it doesn’t eat your week:
- Twice daily, check mentions and DMs. Five minutes each. Reply to anything that needs you. This is non-negotiable and it’s 80 percent of the value.
- Once or twice a week, post something genuinely useful — a local tip, an event note, a real photo with a human caption. Not a rate offer.
- Once a week, spend ten minutes on relationships. Follow a writer, amplify a local account, reply to a source request. Slow compounding.
- Search your own name and neighborhood weekly. Catch the mentions that didn’t tag you. Some of the most important conversations about you never use your handle.
That’s it. Maybe ninety minutes a week, total, and most of it is reactive service work you’d want to be doing anyway.
The bottom line from someone who runs this for hotels
X is not the channel that’s going to transform your bookings or claw back margin from the OTAs. Nothing on social media is — that’s earned through your own site, your pricing, and a booking experience that respects the guest, which is the whole reason our book-direct CRO work exists. Social is the garnish, not the meal.
But as a fast, human service channel, a way to ride local buzz, and a quiet line to the travel press, X can earn a modest spot in a small hotel’s week — if and only if you use it for what it’s actually good at and ignore the parts everyone tells you to obsess over.
If you’re not sure where X fits in your wider visibility picture, or you want a real plan that puts your effort where it’ll actually move the needle, book a call with me. I’ll tell you honestly whether X is worth your time or whether you should ignore it entirely and spend that energy somewhere that pays you back faster.