Just 1 per cent of people found a luxury or boutique hotel through social media last year, according to a new report.

While the number is an increase from last year's 0 per cent, comparatively repeat business accounted for 25 per cent of total bookings, while word of mouth recommendation and online search accounted for 21 per cent and 23 per cent respectively.

The fifth annual Luxury Hotel Benchmarking Report, conducted by BluSky Marketing, is based on the results from 15 luxury and boutique hotels participating in the online hotel guest experience survey (HGES) programme.

Other results within the report are based in 3,882 guests reviews (an average of 259 per property) covering the period between October 2013 and December 2013.

The report also revealed that 49 per cent of people prefer to reserve by phoning the hotel directly, rather than booking online and that many people call after 5pm, when the reservations team have gone home for the day. Also an estimated 34 per cent of hotel reservations were made through third party booking services such as booking.com.

To see the full benchmarking report click here.