A hotel’s reputation, its best presentation card

Apr 11, 2013

The subject of Online Reputation Management was addressed on the second day of the 360° Tourism Marketing Management Congress, held in the city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic from March 21-22, 2013.
R.J. Friedlander, CEO & Founder at ReviewPro and Cristina López, Director of Sales for Spain and Latin America, presented strategies and reviewed best practices for the effective management of a hotel brand’s online reputation.

At the end of their disertation, they offered attendees a demo of how the platform they represent works. In a space conceived for professionals of the travel industry, Mr. Friedlander answered questions involving the importance of knowing the ranking of your property, how to optimize the services you provide, and how to implement techniques to increase your revenue. The result is a more proactive handling of your online reputation.

With ReviewPro’s comprehensive reports, customers may track what’s being said about their hotel on the Internet, measure the quality performance of your property in comparison with your competitors, maximize sales of an online distribution channel and increase direct sales, as well as get your entire time involved in the tweaking process. It also offers the Global Review Index (GRI), which gathers useful data on the top 10 hotels.

The cornerstones of continued success in online reputation management are:

Consumer satisfaction
Revenue

The impact of online reputation is determined by revenue. Clients are willing to pay 38% more for hotels whose comments indicate a superior level of service.

The client is the most important person. There are many tools that allow us to gauge client satisfaction. Some of the include: TripAdvisor, Youtube, Yelp, Booking.com, Hotel.de, Facebook, Twitter, Orbitz, Expedia, Ciao, Holiday Check. For Twitter, hoteliers may employ the use of #hashtags to promote special rates and broadcast events, conferences and festivals. Foursquare gives property options the possibility of making special offers in order to increase brand royalty. Lastly, Facebook may be used to advertise special packages.
It’s evident that social media enables the use of these tools to recommend the hotel and the destination alike.
Before asking guests to leave their opinion on the web, a positive user experience must be created. The best method of acquiring favorable reviews is by making certain guests leave your hotel with a positive experience. A customer’s feedback ought to be handled during their stay, and be proactive about it. A good way to accomplish this is to surprise guest’s with a surprise welcome gift – perhaps something that identifies the destination. Complimentary services, such as free wifi are also welcomed.Since 34%of consumers invest 8 hours in the planning process, previous to deciding where to go on vacation next. Having a presence on online travel opinion sites will be of great help for your brand; those hotels which do not have a presence on such said, or their presence is neutral, receive a lesser amount of visitors.The evolution of online reputation management analyzes what’s being said about your establishments, streamlines the decision-making process so service is always in accordance to a customer’s expectations and sales are being affected by it. It also concedes the maximization of benefits, and fine tune your online investment.