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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of social couponing campaigns for hotels. In particular, the perceived effectiveness related to four specific objectives is explored (acquiring and retaining new customers, building brand awareness, balancing seasonality and stimulating demand among existing customers). Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire-based survey was conducted that involved 108 hotels, each of which has run at least one social couponing campaign through Groupon in Italy. The importance-performance approach was applied to analyze the data. Findings – Overall, the perceived effectiveness of social couponing for hotels is quite low. Social couponing is useful to increase brand awareness but does not encourage customer behavioral loyalty. Larger hotels can successfully use this marketing tool to balance demand seasonality. Research limitations/implications – The sample size is limited but includes approximately one-fourth of all Italian hotels that have run social coupon campaigns through Groupon. Only social couponing campaigns run through one daily deal site (Groupon) in one country (Italy) were considered. Practical implications – Social couponing is not perceived as equally effective for all hotels. This study provides hotel managers with suggestions for deciding whether to allocate a share of their marketing resources to social couponing. Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to present field data to complement the available theoretical knowledge on social couponing for hotels.