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Thanks Laureen, Ulrike and Sian from Trivago team, I had a chance to give some tips for the hoteliers in the Trivago newsletter.
I copy my stuff and you can also read the complete newsletter here
Featured market voice of the month:
October 2009
Claude Benard, Consulting & training for hotel and tourism players – Hotelitour
10 tips to manage your reputation online
Travelers all around the world place a lot of trust in other travelers, websites and online travel agencies that allow people to review hotels that they have stayed at.
According to studies, nearly 1 in 5 travelers admit to reading guest reviews online about hotels before making a final booking, and about 1 in 10 travelers will write a review after their stay. Whether you like it or not, this new Internet trend will not change and as a hotel owner it is important to keep up-to-date with what your guests are writing about your hotel on the Internet because reviews (positive and negative) can directly impact your brand and your future bookings.
To help, I have put together 10 tips to help you manage your online reputation.
1 – Monitoring your reviews and hotel brand over the Internet
- Use the free service from Trivago that brings together reviews from a number of different sites, so that you can get an overview of your hotel reviews and watch your POPULARITY INDEX
- Use the free tool to build up your own brand monitoring tool. Sign up for Google and Yahoo email alerts using specific keywords, for example, your hotel name. (http://alerts.yahoo.com/ and www.google.com/alerts). Do the same with blogs and monitor them with http://technorati.com/watchlist/ Create your own personal search engine with http://rollyo.com/ to provide relevant results from a hand selected list of reliable sites with the desired keywords.
2 – Get your staff involved.
All of your staff need to be aware that your guests reviews impact your business. Make trainings at the reception desk and in the sales and marketing department. Nominate a member of staff to take control.
3 – Respond pro-actively
Don’t be afraid about guest reviews and negative reviews, travelers would rather write about their positive experiences than their negative experiences. Respond pro-actively to guest reviews and user generated content. Hotel management can establish a response policy. You should respond to reviews breifly, in a personal and professional manner.
4 – Develop programs to encourage your satisfied guests to write positive reviews.
Remember the mathematic rule; fewer reviews imply a less popular hotel. In your communication with your guests and after each stay you should encourage them to post a review on different reviewwebsites.
5 – Analyze/Improve
You have to take advantage of all this « data » from your guests. It’s marketing « data » for your hotel. Analyze your guest reviews to understand trends, identify gaps in your performance in comparison to your competitors, identify gaps in your hotel services. This « data » can help you with future investment decisions.
6 – Use « guest reviews » in your official communication
For example, in the next email that you send to your guests you can incorporate your guests reviews to help your customers more comfortable staying at your hotel.
7 – Be aware about your guest reviews have a big impact
While there is a high adoption rate with the individual traveler, many meeting planners now use traveler reviews to learn about hotel reputations. Bad comments may prevent your hotel from ever being considered for a group business.
8 – The automation solution
Hotel chains or large hotels may consider investing in an automated tool that monitors all of the conversations that are happening about their properties, rather than looking at dozens of hotel-review sites, blogs, and forums. Is a solution affordable? Use this formula: calculate the hours that it takes to monitor everything and the opportunity cost of what could be accomplished with the efficiency of technology, particularly where revenue generating team members are involved in the process.
9 – Hotel user review widget
You may consider integrating this widget on your website. Ask yourself these questions:
Is the integration easy and safe?
Does the widget have some design flexibility?
Ask your Trivago team representative about the Trivago Hotel Widget.
10 – Participate in global travel discussions.
Engage in discussions with the consumer, your future potential client. It is an essential part of your travel 2.0 marketing strategy; it will improve your brand awareness. I suggest engaging in discussions on leading travel blogs and leading travel forums, I am sure you will learn and discover useful tips and advice.
Conclusion:
Many consumers consult online reviews before making online or offline travel arrangements. Remember that positive as well as negative reviews increase consumer awareness of your hotel and positive reviews improve consumer attitudes towards your hotel.
I wish you all the success for the future!