Inside Facebook

The Starwood Hotels and Resorts social network campaign has added another element, as guests of the Sheraton hotel chains are filling the globe on the Better When Shared program page with their stories.

The program allows visitors to the hotels to load pictures and description of their stays in any Sheraton across the globe. Those viewing submitted posts will also see a few local attractions for each location, as well as a link to booking information.

All of the stories are also searchable across 9 different categories, including sports, business, family or weddings, and there’s a keyword search to help further pare down the posts. There are three different ways to submit stories, all of which can be searched individually or together: stories logged directly from Sheraton hotels, community stories, and stories filed through a Facebook Connect integration. Icons appear on the map to denote each story type.

So far, there are zero icons for Facebook submissions displaying on the searchable globe. This may just be a matter of Starwood needing to get the word out a little more; the company has had success integrating with Facebook in the past, as is evident by the SPG Tripshare application. Better When Shared could easily become as popular as SPG Tripshare, but the company will need to do a much better job of promoting it on Facebook to get there. As of today, the official Sheraton Facebook page makes no mention of Better When Shared. Perhaps the hotel should take a cue from the name of this program when considering their marketing.