Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business says you, hoteliers, are going to spend one of out every five marketing dollars on social media within five years. Right now, you’re spending almost one of every ten dollars on social media.

Coca Cola’s spending, for example, is going to jump from 10% to 25% within five years. What do they know we don’t? Or do we know this, and we’re moving toward this new world order?

I’d say the latter is true. At Balcony, social media is driving what we’ve termed the 2020 Protocols, an initiative that takes into account the intersection of traditional media outreach (PR), content development (i.e. blog posts, magazine stories, Q&A’s, guest commentaries) and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube).

What do we predict hoteliers are going to spend more money on in social media moving ahead? More on the development of purpose-built editorial that’s shifted into myriad channels for penetration into conversations everywhere, be they on the paper page or in the news feed.

The great inhibitor to being more aggressive today is this, according to this Hotels news story on the subject: “Companies are still struggling with how to measure the impact of social media.”

The metrics aren’t all that persuasive yet, but we’re believers. Are you?