Most travellers are influenced by three factors when it comes to booking accommodation: price, ratings/scores of accommodation on a review site, and proximity to key attractions (not necessarily in that order).
For example, almost all visitors (95%) to Malaysia are influenced by price, while 91% use review sites to help choose accommodation, and 90% prefer hotels near popular tourist attractions.
Lionel Yeo: “Reviews help you to attract the right customers.” (Image credit: Corinne Wan)
Lionel Yeo, manager of hotel partnerships, APAC at TripAdvisor, revealed these facts in his presentation – ‘Level up your business with reviews’ – during the Travel Tech track hosted by WIT at Echelon Malaysia in Penang.
He pointed out that the power of reviews for hotels could not be underestimated. “Reviews help you to attract the right customers, as 96% of travellers consider them important when planning and booking hotels. 83% of travellers would ‘usually’ or ‘always’ reference TripAdvisor reviews before making a booking decision on a hotel.”
They also read six to eight reviews before making a booking.
With reviews playing a pivotal role in a traveller’s decision when booking accommodation, hotels can avail themselves of the travel search site’s ‘Online Reputation Management’ to leverage on its features, suggested Yeo.
The management tool enables hoteliers to monitor reviews and performance activity, respond to and engage with customers, as well as promote recognition and customer feedback.
For hotels it is also beneficial to be engaged in the “Virtuous Circle” of guest engagement (see chart below).
Yeo also called on hoteliers to make use of Review Express, a free tool from TripAdvisor to drive reviews.
With this tool hoteliers can engage with guests after their stay to encourage more reviews. It also has a customisable template to easily email recent guests, a campaign dashboard to monitor incoming reviews and optimise campaigns.
Yeo urged hotels to partner with TripAdvisor to drive more reviews, as hotels that ask for them perform better (see chart below).
To get even more guests’ feedback they can work with the various companies under TripAdvisor’s Review Collection Partners such as ReviewPro, Revinate, TrustYou (full list here) to get more feedback from guests.
The key takeaways from Yeo’s presentation:
- Online reputation management is critical to hospitality businesses.
- Reviews can help hotels attract the right customers, improve their services, and influence their TripAdvisor rankings.
- Travel tech companies can help hoteliers manage their online reputation by encouraging more reviews.
• Featured image credit: Corinne Wan
