Emilie Couton, director of hotel solutions for Accor Asia Pacific, started her presentation by asking the audience if they felt women were more like angels or devils as customers.
When the majority said “devils”, she smiled and said that perhaps by the end of her speech, they’d change their minds.
Firstly though she laid the landscape, showing that women were, if not angels or devils, definitely power consumers.
She cited statistics such as “85% of all brand purchases are made by women”, “58% of social media users are women” and “92% pass along information to others”.
On Twitter, women tend to have more followers and tweets more than men.
But the most important reason why brands should target women is because “women give higher satisfaction scores”, based on research conducted by Accor on their customers.
“The Net Promoter Score given by women is more than three points higher than men,” said Couton.
In her earlier presentation, Accor Advantage Plus CEO Louise Daley also shared data (below) that showed that women tended to give higher ratings to hotel services than men.
For women, what was more important beyond the specific service or amenity, was the “overall emotional effect”, said Couton.
In her presentation, Jennifer Rein (right) of Experian Hitwise also confirmed that the fairer sex tended to give better reviews on social networks and urged suppliers to “connect and empower them”. 
Females make up 53.3% of visitors to TripAdvisor and they seek input from their networks. That’s why it’s important to run “Like” and “Share” campaigns via email and to make web and apps sharable.
Women are also social in their planning. “Social media and customer reviews are an essential part of especially female travellers’ information gathering process,” she quoted a study from The Centre for Hospitality Research.
She also shared data from Compete report (Nov 2011) that showed more women (53%) own smartphones than men and women tend to use the devices for, in this order, text messages, social networks, sharing photos and videos, financial and shopping, email access and mobile games.
Men tend to stream content (movies/TV), make dinner reservations and check corporate email.
By the end of both their presentation, it was clear the “angels” outnumbered the “devils” in the audience.
View Rein's presentation here
