Our first social media client. Before the manual existed: 8 years at Darina Hotels.

2010: the year "social media marketing" wasn't a profession

In 2010, Facebook was six years old and barely transitioning from "student network" to "communication infrastructure". In Romania, large hotels had websites, many had booking forms. None, or almost none, had a Facebook page maintained daily.

"Social media marketing" wasn't a profession. There were no manuals. No courses. No case studies to read. No benchmarks. No job descriptions. People still asked "who can set up a Facebook account for our hotel?" — under the assumption that this was the work: setting up the account.

The same year, we started our first social media marketing partnership. With a hotel.

A generational handover at Darina Hotels

Darina Hotels, Târgu Mureș. A family-run hospitality chain with solid Transylvanian roots. When we began the partnership, a generational handover had just taken place: the new leadership had stepped into operational management, and their agenda was different from the previous generation's.

Specifically: they were open to experiments. They trusted trying something new. They had a rare combination for Romanian hospitality at the time — a solid existing business (3 hotels + 4 restaurants) that allowed them to invest in untrodden directions, and a sincere entrepreneurial curiosity.

These weren't their easiest days — the 2009–2010 real estate crisis had hit Romanian hospitality hard — but they were their most courageous.

The original brief: "let's try something new on Facebook"

The brief at the first meeting had no KPI. No benchmark. No concrete measurable objective. But it did have a clear intent:

We want to try something new on Facebook. We don't know exactly what, but we want to try.

And without saying it explicitly, both parties understood something important: neither of us knew how to do it. We were going to discover together. We were going to make mistakes together. We were going to learn.

In retrospect, that was the difference. We didn't show up with "our social media package". They didn't expect "show us what to do". It was an exploratory relationship in which the question was "what would work?" — and both of us had to answer.

What we invented together (because no standards existed)

With no manual, no benchmark, no reference — we built a working model that, in retrospect, is identical to what's taught today as "2026 best practice":

A daily-maintained Facebook page

That was rare in 2010, even internationally. Big hotels posted weekly, if at all. Daily posts change the algorithm, change audience expectation, change everything.

Monthly photo sessions

Not stock images, not photos taken from the hotel window with a phone. Directed monthly photo shoots, with production adapted to the season. That was — and is — the difference between a hotel that looks like an ad and one that looks like itself.

Behind-the-scenes

The chef in the kitchen. Housekeeping preparing rooms. Reception in the morning. The team that made the chain run, visible. In 2010, the idea of "showing the people behind" was counterintuitive for hospitality — back then, "everything perfect and anonymous" was preferred. We bet that people would respond to people.

Direct communication with customers, in the comments

No moderator. No template responses. A real person, a human tone, replies within hours. That was radical for a hospitality brand in 2010.

Drone and aerial content

Added over the years as the technology became accessible. In 2010, drones for commercial photography were rare and expensive. Over the course of the partnership we integrated aerial work as a standard tool — once it became viable.

The 2009–2010 real estate crisis: the wider context

At the same time we began the Darina partnership, Romanian hospitality was going through its toughest period since 1990. The global financial crisis + the Romanian real estate collapse = closed chains, hotels sold for scrap, restaurants closing one by one.

In that context, Darina did two things in parallel:

• Innovative management on the product side. They invented new accommodation formats, packages, seasonal offers, partnerships with local events. They treated the crisis not as a marketing problem, but as a product problem.
• Direct communication with customers, through the new channel we were building together. Instead of "shouting" offers in paid ads, they talked directly to the audience, answered questions, built relationships.

The communication we were building didn't save Darina — their product did that. But the communication amplified what they did internally. And that's the difference between a marketing channel that's an accessory and one that's part of the business.

The business outcome

Engagement, reach, follower count numbers — they're no longer documented eight years after the partnership ended. We're not going to invent them now.

What is documented is the number that matters: the chain's expansion during the partnership.

• At the start (2010): 3 hotels + 4 restaurants = 7 locations.
• At the end (2018): 5 hotels + 8 restaurants + 3 self-service locations (in high-traffic zones) = 16 locations.

The chain more than doubled in eight years. In a period (2009–2018) when Romanian hospitality overall did not grow on that scale. The combination of innovative management + direct customer communication produced a sustainable business in a contracted market.

We repeat: communication didn't build the hotels. Communication made the results visible, made customer relationships continuous, made the brand recognised. Darina built the hotels.

Why this story matters in 2026

For a reader who in 2026 runs a hospitality brand, the Darina story holds three practical lessons:

Discipline begins with the decision, not with the budget.

In 2010, Darina wasn't spending fortunes on social media — the budget was modest by today's standards. The difference was consistency. The same discipline works in 2026.

The basic model hasn't changed in 14 years.

The tools have changed (Instagram, TikTok, drone), but the structure of serious hospitality social media is the same: daily-updated page + monthly shoot + BTS + direct communication. If you call an agency and they pitch "the new 2026 strategy" that doesn't include these four elements — you're at the wrong agency.

An eight-year partnership is proof the model works at the scale of time.

Not sparkly three-month campaigns. Not annual re-pitches. Eight years of the same discipline, delivered consistently. That builds brands that last.

The conclusion

Darina Hotels was the agency's first social media marketing client. Not because we had expertise — nobody did in 2010. But because we both had the courage to try, and to continue for eight years without giving up when results weren't visible as numbers.

The exact engagement numbers from 2012 or 2015 no longer exist. We're not inventing them. But the Darina chain, which more than doubled from 7 to 16 locations during the partnership, is empirical proof.

In 2018, the commercial partnership ended — each of us took a different path. But the relationship stayed. Whenever we're in the Târgu Mureș area, we go eat there. Their sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls) are, hands down, the best we've ever had. That's what's left after eight years — not a KPI report, but a place you come back to when you're passing through.

And in business, that's the best metric you could ever hope for.