AbstractIn light of the development of social media, social media marketing has been widely adopted by all kinds of business industries and even government organizations. This phenomenon also lead to some changes in the buying behavior of the customer, which may require the company to alter their existing marketing strategy. For hotel industry, the usage of this up-to-date marketing method is still at the preliminary stage. To promote the development, this study chose hotel chain, which is the most representative operational form within the hospitality industry, as an example to identify and demonstrate the opportunity as well as the risk that social media marketing can bring while addressing some possible approaches for the hotel chain to engage with social media marketing.  Key words: social media, social media marketing, hotel chain, eWOM 1.0 IntroductionSocial media (SM), especially the social networks, has generated