In today’s digital landscape, beautiful imagery alone isn’t enough to capture and maintain audience attention. Luxury properties face increasing pressure to stand out in overcrowded social feeds and to deliver measurable results.
The challenge becomes even more complex when you consider the sophisticated expectations of luxury travelers. They want to feel connected to the property, understand its unique story, and imagine themselves in the experience. This leaves many social media managers asking, “How do we transform our social presence from a digital billboard into storytelling platforms that drives real business results?”
Today’s guest of Social Pulse: Hospitality Edition with Agorapulse’s Chief Storyteller Mike Allton, knows exactly how to thread that needle. As a luxury hotel social media and marketing manager at Rosewood Miramar Beach, a triple Forbes five-star resort, Kara Pearson has revolutionized how luxury properties approach social media.
[Listen to the full episode below, or read along for the transcript of the Social Pulse: Hospitality Edition, powered by Agorapulse. Try it for free today.]
Why did Rosewood Miramar Beach’s luxury hotel social media need to change?
Kara Pearson: When I came on the team, I was just soaking up everything like a sponge and just focusing on what they were doing in the past, which focused on just beautiful static images, short and sweet captions, light and bright palettes. It was something that was very visually exciting to guests and very focused on more commercial photography and product photography.
And so when I took the reins as social media manager, I wanted to start with our visuals, and that focused on our Instagram grid. So as you were scrolling down previously, you would see more of a repetition with the color palette.
When I came in, I wanted to shift that into more of a seasonal flow as you would flow down our Instagram feed. I wanted it to feel like it was the present and what you’re seeing with the natural colors of the surrounding destination—then also playing around with how colors balance together. As you see a nine grid, you’re going to see pops of colors in different parts of each post that play off of each other.
That’s where I bring my experience [with] working in editorial magazines into play so that as you’re looking at an entire nine grid, it feels very balanced.
It feels like every piece of the puzzle fits together, but it’s also able to stand alone and have this vibrancy, this seasonality that truly just invites you in to continue scrolling.
Tell us a little bit more about Rosewood
Kara Pearson: Our resort is located in Montecito, California, and I’ve been lucky enough to be on the team house, as a luxury hotel social media manager for almost about three years now. When I first came on, our resort was handled mainly by a PR agency for all social content. So this was an amazing moment.
I grew up in Santa Barbara. I have a true connection to the community here where the resort lives, and it was nice to bring kind of that community perspective from a local’s point of view into that role to really showcase the destination in ways that guests or agencies might not get to see every single day.
Mike Allton: Love that. That’s the kind of hands-on, local, in-person benefit or almost requirement many of our past guests have talked about from Potter’s Resorts in England or MGM in Las Vegas. They often talk about the need to be there on the property, being able to create content and understand what’s happening. And I think that’s going to lend itself to your answer to the next question, but I am wondering how you understand this kind of a luxury audience.
What’s your approach to researching, finding out what preferences are, behaviors, and social media?
Kara Pearson: My background is in luxury fashion and editorial as I mentioned before. So I’ve been pretty close to this audience for decades. I first started in editorial work in 2011 and grew as a graphic designer and then also through editorial and print publications in LA.
And so I’ve had the luxury of having this close relationship to this style of client for many years prior, but I’ve done a few things that have helped me basically analyze the audience and understand the type of content that’s making them want to stop and engage with it.
One of those things is just truly researching trends and going on Instagram, scrolling through content, seeing what your competitors are doing, seeing how they’re doing it, and the why.
I think the biggest thing is the why for me when I’m creating content is: What type of content is going to spark emotion? What’s going to be that one thing that makes someone smile or one thing that makes someone feel inspired?
And as a creative, having this past experience, I tend to lean into finding that creativity on social media.
So, it truly is just analyzing content that you’re seeing and then also taking it a step further and testing out your own audience and seeing what type of content they’re interacting with.
I always say, “Success leaves breadcrumbs,” and when you see something start to be successful, you’ll see that with likes, comments, shares, and reposts. That’s when you can tell the patterns starting to begin. For me, it’s just finding those moments where you’re analyzing the patterns, but you’re also analyzing those patterns on other competitors, Instagrams, or just in luxury hotel social media—just being really in the know of what’s going on with those specific demographics.
What were the initial challenges of implementing a brand-new luxury hotel social media strategy?
Kara Pearson: I think the biggest thing that any large property would understand is making sure that the departments are aligned with content and making sure that they feel like they have a voice in the content creation.
We have a very passionate team, and I absolutely adore it because it allows me to work closely with people who are not just creators, not just photographers or videographers, but people who are creating in their own craft.
The first challenge was just getting that line of communication and getting that organization so that we’re all on the same page—whether that’s before a photo shoot, whether that’s during a photoshoot, or after as we’re promoting their event, or as we’re promoting their activations.
The biggest challenge was uniting our departments and having them understand the meaningful and exciting work that we do for social media. As we started opening up those doors and started opening up, let’s all sit at the table together and talk about how we can create some incredible content, they would get excited. Having that excitement just fuels the storytelling all in
Share an example of your social post or campaign in a traditional luxury hotel social media post and how you’ve turned that into one of those storytelling opportunities that resonated with your audience.
Kara Pearson: One of the best ones to talk about, and it’s one of the months we’ve been the most proud of this year, is our Triple Forbes 5 star.
It was going to be an incredible announcement. Typically, in resort worlds, hotel worlds, and hospitality, you can aim to announce with just a simple post. Whether it’s a photo, or maybe it’s the logo of the accolade—but we wanted to take it one step further.
View this post on Instagram
I crafted and developed the Forbes Triple Five Stars series, which was an interview-style series that we were able to partner on with all of our team members from different departments. They were able to sit in these moments of interview style and talk about not only the stories that they’ve shared with guests, but their experience being at the property and what it means to be on Team Myanmar.
It was one of those moments that brought so much joy to our community, seeing people that they recognize every single day. When I talk about community, it’s not necessarily local community but digital community. It’s people that they would come to the property and see and have these interactions with and so being able to highlight the hard work behind the accolade meant so much to our team to feel like they’ve got to have this incredible moment on a pedestal.
But it also allowed us to share our stories that you might not necessarily see from just a typical photo.
How do you maintain brand consistency when you do things that are a little bit different?
Kara Pearson: I think that is always the creator’s challenge, right? Of finding their own inspiration and finding their own voice within a brand.
For me, I just wanted to get rooted and understand our brand as a whole, not only for Rosewood Miramar Beach but for Rosewood Hotels nationally. And so being able to take that time to train in their content pillars and their visual guidelines, their mood boards, it definitely plays a major factor in how I produce our content, whether that’s photoshoots, video shoots, even iPhone shoots, of just having their perspective being the overarching tone.
But what is special about me as a creator and the way I produce content in a way that pushes the boundaries is by looking at different angles of how we could create the content. There are so many times when you can go to a beach and see the beach in this beautiful way and capture it, but not everyone’s perspective is going to be the same.
It’s finding those unique perspectives of what is something that our audience might not be seeing that we get to see every day because we’re on property.
So I think I bring it in with the creative angles, the innovative new concepts, and that has to go back to creating the storyline. Making sure that each piece of content, especially if it’s high res video, it feels like you’re hand-holding the guest through a story.
I think that’s what’s been the most riveting for me to learn about, because with video being now the biggest, most important content you’re seeing on social media, having that storyline and that ability to plan out exactly how you want the content to run—I think that’s where I’m able to get a little bit more creative.
[Another] one of the examples, I know this is a little silly, but we are a huge dog-friendly property, and we love the idea of showcasing that we’re dog-friendly. One of the ideas we came up with as a team—and one of the photo shoots that I led—was bringing dogs onto the property and having them run around and be in our accommodations, in our rooms, in our bathtubs, and filming them having fun. That was something so different that our brand probably has never done before, but it’s opened the door for other opportunities. We’ve done that before by bringing on bunnies for a Reel and having them run around the property for Easter. Let me tell you, reeling in bunnies is not the easiest, but we were able to create this. It’s a really fun, energetic piece of content that just blew up because everyone loved it. They just love seeing something that makes them smile. They love seeing joy showcased, and that’s not very common to see a luxury property having a dog in the bed, but it’s something that pushes the boundaries. After we completed our Easter Reel, we noticed a year after that, that became a little bit of a trend with other properties. We pushed the boundaries a little bit and led us to creating a little bit of a social trend.
Mike Allton: Okay, that’s hilarious. I’m fairly certain bunny wrangling was not on your bingo card for that day.
One of the things that I picked up on was that you’re talking about creating high res video, even with an iPhone. It’s interesting to me because recently I was interviewing one of TikTok’s product managers, and they were talking about how, at least on their platform, the real trend is towards UGC content.
Even if the brand is creating the content, they still wanted that UGC look of more amateurish kind of a thing. A lot of the hotel chains that we talked to, they’re talking about sharing pictures and videos and that sort of thing with guests.
What role does UGC have in your strategy?
Kara Pearson: We’ve been blessed to work with incredible influencers over the years and opened our doors to be able to create partnerships where it showcases the resort. In the past, we’ve actually partnered very closely with some of these influencers.
One example was our most viral reel last year was a collaboration with an influencer and another company that was local to Santa Barbara. It’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. We had this collaboration coming from all angles. We had our UGC influencer who’s focused on creating in a way that would make sense for it to be feeling off the cuff but then also having this brand partnership between us and Mad Dogs. And so having all those cooks in the kitchen, we were able to come together and meet in this beautiful synergy of putting together a storyline and supporting our influencer and just talking through ideas of what would make sense for the Rosewood Miramar Beach Instagram, but then what would also make sense for her.
So, it was an amazing partnership that opened the door to really becoming more aligned with the process. I think that’s why that Reel became so successful, just because it does give a point of view, it gives the creator’s point of view and showcases her experience but allows us to still mix in our ideas of “what about this view” or this or that?
It was a very special partnership that ended up being very successful.
How are you talking about all those aspects [of the resort] while still trying to maintain that cohesive narrative of the overall experience?
Kara Pearson: We are lucky enough where we have four dedicated Instagram accounts, and three of those are dedicated to our restaurants on property including our Michelin Star and Michelin Green Star Restaurant so we are able to funnel a lot of the content focused on Food and Beverage through those luxury hotel social media accounts.
It’s going back to what I mentioned before with the Instagram grid and making it feel balanced. I think for our Rosewood Miramar Beach account, I want every single nine grid that you’re seeing to feel balanced. Like, you’re getting a little piece of everything from our resort because we have an incredible F&B program with our restaurants, but we also have a Forbes five-star spa and then we have been implementing all these new boutique openings. There’s retail that you can go and shop on property.
There are a lot of different aspects because we are such a large resort. So going back to that grid and making sure that my content calendar feels very balanced, it feels like it flows with the style of the season. I think that’s what keeps it all aligned but makes sure we’re not highlighting too much of one outlet. We want to make sure every piece of our puzzle is being showcased throughout our Instagram grid.
Are there resources or influencers that you turn to to keep up with all this?
Kara Pearson: Yeah, so I mean, for me, it’s always boots on the ground with seeing what’s going on in the luxury hotel social media industry.
One of the things that I have done, which is—I don’t know if many people know how to do this—but you can actually tailor the search bar of your Instagram account to specific keywords and to specific content that you want to be seeing. I did that with each of our four accounts. So, as I go on to each account and go into our search bar, I’m going to see content that is relative to that industry. Whether it’s trending audios, trending videos, basically any bars that we’re inspired by, any incredible creators that are popping up, I find a lot of it through the app. And when I say I flip through many tabs, it allows you to compartmentalize the initiative. So, when I go on to Rosewood Miramar Beach, I know I’m going to be seeing content in my search bar that’s luxury travel, coastal escapes, beautiful five-star resorts, or hotels.
That helps me stay on top of what’s happening with creators and then also what’s happening in the industry.
Thank all of you for reading the highlights of this episode about luxury hotel social media today. Don’t forget to find the Social Pulse Podcast: Hospitality Edition on Apple, and drop us a review. We’d love to know what you think. Don’t miss other editions of the Social Pulse Podcast like the Retail Edition, Agency Edition, and B2B Edition.
