I guess I’m a skeptic in terms of anonymous opinions, for what you think of a given experience is always marred by your intention, character and state of mind when you’re entering your review.
I guess my question is, how does one achieve an overall objectivity with these reviews? Or is objectivity even necessary?
As an example, last year during a very groovy Christmas party, I was talking to this wonderfully animated French woman who absolutely hated Singapore and was going to go back to France. I was in the right mood and decided to probe deeper into this ‘hate’. At the end, what came out was that she was angry at Singapore because her husband of many years had left her for a local girl.
If I hadn’t delved deeper into her ‘hating Singapore’, I would have walked away with the wrong conclusion.
In the same way, when people review hotel rooms, the motivation and mood of the person cannot be deciphered from the review. And thus, once again, you may walk away with the wrong impression.
The Accor hotel group has decided to make a leap of faith and be the first hotel group to post recent customer opinions about its hotels online. Thus, when you now go to the hotel site of Novotel, for example, you will also find travelers’ opinions from TripAdvisor right next to the booking engine.
In order to get as many reviews, hopefully positive ones, email messages are sent to travelers one week after their stay, encouraging them to provide feedback.
I can see why Accor is doing it. To provide transparency before and after your stay, in order to demonstrate its commitment to higher quality.
Maria Taylor, VP Loyalty and Direct Sales, Accor Asia Pacific said, “We believe that we need to listen to our customers and we are not concerned about this feedback. We are confident in our brands and our customer service and believe that any increase in consumer generated content, either positive or negative, can only improve our offerings to our customers.”
I decided to test out the Accor site to appease my skepticism. To clarify, the TripAdvisor reviews are only visible if you search for the hotel on the www.accorhotels.com site and not if you go directly to the site of a given Accor hotel.
I decided to test the Sofitel Rio de Janeiro Copacabana and the Novotel in Singapore, two hotels that I’ve been to. The rating of the former was 4 (out of 5), while the latter got 3.5. For the Sofitel in Rio the comments were ‘Great view and service’, ‘Location, Location, Location’ and ‘Bugs on my bed’. The comments written for the Novotel in Singapore were ‘Good value and great location but don’t expect a place’, ‘Could be better’ and ‘Excellent location and outstanding service in premier lounge’.
As I read the comments, I suddenly realized that objectivity was not really necessary. Indeed, I was the one who put on my objectivity glasses while glancing at subjective opinions. If they sounded factual I absorbed them. If they were overly flattering I was nauseated. And if they were overly trashy, well, I read the comment as a joke, but didn’t really take it into consideration.
As an example, I took the negative comment about ‘bugs in my bed’ less seriously for it seemed to be an isolated experience, since there were no other similar comments that I could find. Perhaps the couple simply had bad luck.
The conclusion is that I made my own opinion regarding the hotels, which was aided by other travelers’ experiences, even if they were negative. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the consumer is smart enough when making a decision, and won’t necessarily be dissuaded by a few negative comments here or there.
What I also realized is that I would put much more weight on comments from people I knew, versus anonymous write-ups. A negative comment coming from a friend would be much more detrimental, while a positive one would instantaneously seal the deal.
Featured image credit (rating stars buttons): Ockra/iStock
