Monitoring and Responding to Internet Feedback about Your Motel
This is a very interesting post by Stewart Haines past president of The Motel Association of New Zealand on his Blog: http://motella.blogspot.com
There is a growing phenomenon of websites that publish feedback from gusts that stay at commercial accommodation, including motels. Web-cred is of increasing importance as a motel’s consumer rating is being formulated and exposed to the world by guest reviews. Past guests are more than happy to share accommodation experiences and future potential guests are using these reviews to determine their accommodation choice.
The importance of your motel’s on-line consumer “rating” will soon outstrip rating systems such as Qualmark. The Internet not only is making the traditional “Agent” redundant, but will soon be threatening traditional quality assurance programmes. In the very near future, it is conceivable that a motel’s “star rating” will be solely determined by on-line reviews. This is daunting territory for many motel owners as the reviewers’ data is raw, live and very pointed… who can argue with the adage that the customer / market is always correct!
It will become increasingly important for moteliers to monitor the Internet chatter on social media sites and networks surrounding their motels.
How can you monitor on-line guest feedback and comments? The answer is simple, easy to set up and FREE! Google Alerts provide email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic. Your motel name (and variants of) should be entered into your Google Alerts. Google is the most comprehensive search engine that now indexes the whole blogosphere and consumer-generated sites.
Background
It’s common knowledge that the Internet has changed how travel consumers perceive the credibility of information. Any discrepancy between “official” and “unofficial” content should be dealt with immediately. A motel has to stand by its product and service, but cannot ignore the “popular vote” for its product’s quality.
Research has shown that consumer-generated content on social media sites and networks is perceived as more credible by online travelers. The bigger the disparity between official and unofficial content, the bigger the gap in credibility.
Social Media (Consumer-Generated Media) is online content created by Internet users and made available to other Internet users via Web 2.0 interactive technology applications. Motel/hotel review sites such as TripAdvisor.com are part of the Social Media phenomenon.
Fact
- 38% of US Internet users (72 million) use a social media site at least once a month
- 89% of US Online Buyers read customer reviews before they buy – 43% most of the time, 22% always.
So what are the most important motel / hotel-related customer review sites? There are only a handful that the majority of travel reviewers’ visit:
- TripAdvisor.com: TripAdvisor receives over 30 million visitors every month. The hotel can actively respond to any customer review via the ‘Hotel Owner’s Page’ by using the link located at the bottom of the page with customer reviews and then clicking on the ‘Respond to a Review’ link.
- Expedia.com: Expedia is the largest online travel agency (OTA). Currently the hotel can monitor all of Expedia’s customer reviews, but cannot actually respond to a review.
- Google.com: Google is the largest search engine with 60% of search traffic in the United States, and more than 75%-80% of traffic in Europe. Google provides a sampling of reviews for each hotel from TripAdvisor and other review sites (type in the hotel name + location, and then click on Reviews under the hotel listing). You can then visit each of the review sites and respond to an actual review there if allowed.
- Travel Bug: NZ’s own travel site has yet to generate sales that live up to the hype of its successful big brother, TradeMe. Guest reviews are a relatively new addition.
Action Plan for Monitoring Internet Chatter about Your Motel
It is important to respond to reviews and comments as you are made aware of them, so you can immediately address any issues and act appropriately (both negative and positive).
Here are some quick tips for responding to customer reviews:
- Thank the customer for taking the time to write a review
- Apologize profusely if the customer is right on target with their negative review
- Provide a simple, short explanation of what really happened (if such an explanation is possible)
- Assure the reviewer and motel guests in general that every possible step has been taken to address the problem or service in question
- Offer a direct line of communication between you and the reviewer (via email, direct phone line, etc.) in order to rectify the situation
- To conclude the response, use any elements of the customer’s comments that are constructive (e.g. great location, comfortable rooms, etc) to put a positive spin on a negative review.
Conclusion
Moteliers need to work hard to nurture happy customers and avoid negative postings. They must monitor reviews on review sites, TripAdvisor in particular, and react immediately if an extremely positive or negative review is posted.
Use Google Alerts to monitor all online chatter about your motel.
It’s much better to react to these postings and show your current and potential customers that you are 100% committed to serving them by addressing any and all problems, rather than ignoring complaints. You may be under the impression that responding to a negative review is a wasted effort because this customer will probably never return. However, your response should be primarily focused on assuring the traveling public that the issue is being addressed and the motel is dedicated to customer service.
Your response will also speak to future potential customers who might stumble on this review and the motel ’s response.
August 28 2008 09:14 pm | Articles for current moteliers and Changes in Motel Trends
Ross Brader on 28 Aug 2008 at 9:47 pm #
What an interesting item you have posted here!
Gareth Pearce on 29 Aug 2008 at 9:35 am #
Ezibed.com, a New Zealand owned last minute accommodation website founded in 2003 launched ratings and reviews back in April 2008 and so far has received 1598 ratings and 998 reviews on nearly 4556 review requests. This amounts to a 35% response rate for ratings and a 22&% response rate for reviews.
Consumer response is valuable to both existing and future customers as a tool to accurately determine the truth about a property through the eyes of past travellers, and also to accommodation providers as a means to evaluate the services they provide – and for some improve, and others reinforce the good services they provide.
Ezibed.com sends all reviews direct to the manager/owner on a monthly basis and the owner/manager has the opportunity to respond if they wish. This response is then put onto the website to give customers balanced reviews. We send this feedback direct to the manager/owner rather the reservations team so that this information gets to the decision maker.
The reason Ezibed.com added ratings and reviews stemmed from customer feedback. They wanted it, so they got it.
As you know, customers want transperency and certainty when booking online. Customer feedback allows for this as the customer now doesn’t have to rely on what the accommodation provider thinks of themselves, but what their customers actually think of them. In some cases their is a large gap between the two.
Customers ratings and reviews are here to stay. The accommodation providers that embrace this feedback and make changes to their buinesses based on the information provided by their customers will be the businesses that succeed. The ones that ignore it will not.
Gareth Pearce
Managing Director
Ezibed.com
Dean Schmit on 23 Oct 2008 at 5:46 am #
Fantastic article! I would add however that many more travel sites are becoming an important part of this picture.
You already mentioned Expedia and TripAdvisor, but you will also find reviews on sites such as Yahoo Travel, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and many more.
Google will not search these sites, nor will it pull content from sites such as YouTube or Flickr (video and photo posting sites).
All of these sites can be searched manually, however to be fair, at some point this becomes a very tedious process. How many times are you willing to look up your reviews on Travelocity, only to find no new information, before you stop looking and miss something that might have been important?
Our human nature makes us inclined to set aside tasks that are tedious. It is for this reason many hoteliers are seeking out various tools to help monitor this content for them, such as Review Analyst (www.reviewanalyst.com). This changes what would have been a regular “surfing safari” into a 3-5 minute task. And just in case you forget, we’ll send a weekly summary of everything that has happened with your hotel.
Regardless of your approach, one thing is for certain – consumers are no longer accepting the word of sales and marketing professionals as fact, and are seeking confirmation from other consumers. This is not going away, and will only get bigger, so it is important to have a plan in place to use this to your advantage.
Dean Schmit
Product Manager
reviewanalyst.com