Online reviews - can make or break you

HospiBuz Desk

As a service-oriented business, the hospitality industry heavily relies on reviews and recommendations. A review acts as a public announcement about the business, as such, it has much power to topple a reputed company as it has to create a good image in the market. Reviews can be directly tied to an increase in sales.

It is essential for the Hoteliers to respond to the reviews, in particular, a negative review. In order to maintain a good connection with the guest and encourage future bookings while avoiding losing out on new business. Online reviews of past clients, therefore, are very critical when it comes to attracting new clientele. These reviews are usually posted on social media pages of the hotel company itself, third-party review websites, or travel websites that aggregate information on hotel and travel deals.

Understanding consumer needs & wants have been a major source of success for hotel organization. Notwithstanding, investigating the valence of online review & modelling hotel attributes and performances is still a rather novel approach. What your hotel guest say about your property in the form of photos or videos is the kind of content that is influencing the minds of the influential guests.

In 2017 survey, 97% of consumers said they looked at online sites for information on local business, and 85% said they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Another survey then found that 22% of respondents would not spend money on business after reading a single negative comment. A recent online survey by research firm found that people trust reviews by fellow travellers more than advice by travel agent some 20% of respondents to the research thought website TripAdvisor is the most reliable source of information.

TripAdvisor is the number one most visited site and app by customers before booking in the top travel markets. TripAdvisor Review Collection Program helps hotels to gather valuable feedback data while increasing review volume and ranking on TripAdvisor. When participating, hotels can embed the TripAdvisor review form into their survey. When the guest completes all of the survey questions, the answers will be sent to the hotel and posted on your hotel’s TripAdvisor page as a guest review. Not only does this increase your review volume and freshness (both of which are important to boosting your ranking), it also facilitates the process of writing reviews for consumers, making it more likely that they will do so. TripAdvisor has a positive effect on hotel revenue growth. Meanwhile, TripAdvisor has employed a team trained in fraud detection to monitor fake reviews and has software which scans the posing for any anomalies.