Every hotelier knows that their business success relies on the satisfaction of their guests. It is a known fact, as well, that people trust consumer reviews. In fact, trust in these is 12 times the trust people place in a manufacturer or business’ own descript. This is why it is so important that all businesses engage in reputation management, but also that it is specific to their industry. Indeed, online reputation management services for hotels are wholly different than those for other businesses.
How Online Reputation Management Services for Hotels Work
In order for hotels to manage their reputation, they must perform guest analytics and intelligence. In so doing, hoteliers can leverage their internal resources and operations so that their reputation increases. Essentially, an external online reputation management specialist will create proprietary semantic algorithms that check all guest reviews, using these to measure what the overall sentiment of the average customer is. In other words, these algorithms collate data, analyze it, and present it in a simplified manner, often through a simple score.
There are a number of things that the algorithm will look at. Those include:
The age of the reviewer.
How often reviews are left.
What the different sources for reviews are.
What the specific guest preferences are.
Using this data, it becomes possible for a hotel to identify what their key strengths are, which they can then market so that they reach even more consumers. Additionally, this will encourage more people to leave positive reviews on various important websites. In 2010, it was revealed in the Consumer Shopping Habits Survey by Channel Advisor that 83% of people who shop for a holiday are influence by the reviews of other customers.
Not only does this analysis identify what a hotel’s strengths are, it also identifies its businesses. Hotels can then use this information to make the necessary changes, which in turn should increase overall hotel revenues. It really cannot be stressed enough how important it is that hotels also learn from the negatives, particularly when considering that at least one third of all consumers will not decide to book their hotel room until they have read a number of reviews.
Where to Find Hotel Reviews
As a hotelier, it is recommended to enlist the services of a professional reputation management company. They will offer a number of key features, including:
The collation of reviews from hundreds of different other sites, including blogs, videos, social media, and so on. They will even be able to do this for different languages.
Access to a dashboard that allows you to respond directly to each of these reviews.
The ability to share reviews on other sites, including social media accounts and websites.
The ability to collect feedback from guests at checkout and feed this into the system.
A review of how the competition is doing.
With this information, you should be able to significantly improve your overall hotel operations and increase revenue as well, thereby becoming far more successful.