"Many major travel booking sites have now added customer reviews and ratings. Expedia and Travelocity offer guest reviews and ratings while Priceline, Hotwire and Hotels.com provide customer feedback by numeric rating scales (e.g., 4 out of 5 or 7 out of 10). Some sites offer users incentives to post both reviews and photographs. IgoUgo,for example, gives points-style incentives for free gifts from companies such as Target, iTunes and Amazon to users who post reviews or photos.”
However, with the upside of the forum, where potential travelers can use the sites and blogs as a gauge to make a reservation at a particular hotel based on comments from a website or blog, there is also a downside. Granted there will not always be good reviews, hotels have to protect themselves and ensure that those who did indeed write a blog, good or bad, was actually a guest at the hotel. Disgruntled ex-employees, malicious competitors, forever dissatisfied customers or the case of the mistaken site, where the wrong comment is posted on the wrong site, is something that managers have to be on the lookout for.
Due to the effect such comments may have, sites have taken a number of steps to ensure that the claims made are legitimate. Some sites limit who can post a comment, Expedia uses their sign in process to see if the person actually booked a hotel within the given time frame. Others contact the hotel if a poor review is posted on the site to ensure that the validity of the posting.
The biggest problem for owners/ managers of a hotel is finding out what is being written about their hotel. It is a long and tedious task, however when they do find out what is being posted they should immediately take action to rectify the problem and clear any misunderstandings.
The internet can provide a wealth of information. When booking my holidays I do go online and read some of the comments posted. However, it is unclear whether a person wrote a bad comment out of spite or if it was truly warranted. Everyone view and experience things differently. What may be pleasant for me may not be for another individual, and so I do not put too much into what the others are saying. I am willing to take the chance and experience it myself.
Your Hotel? - How guest review Web sites may be impacting your Hotel.
Retrieved March 23, 2007 from, president of Hospitality Technology
Consulting.Web site: http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/_magazine/magazine_Detail.asp?ID=67
2 comments:
This summary highlights several key elements of blogging. It can be an extremely beneficial tool for hotels and restaurants, but it can also be extremely detrimental to those very same establishments. If a disgruntled worker or malicious customer wanted to, they could post on these sites to try to harm the reputation of the hotel, restaurant, or business. With these blog sites, there is not a standard way for them to check to see whether or not the person posting the blog was truly a customer of the said establishment. Until the day comes where there is some sort of verification procedure, businesses need to peruse the sites to make sure they are not being improperly depicted online.
I found this article extremly interesting. It highlights one of the major concerns that hotels have regarding Real Simple Syndication activities such as interenet blogs. I was surprised to know that there are defense mechanisms in place for things such as disgruntled emloyees or just troubled guest such as validating the claims. Though these blogs can be detrimental at times I think it is very important that they are there so that hotels can get honest unbiased feedback from their guest. Since it is administerd by a third party, guess may feel more free to give a more objective opinion as opposed to former methods such as surveys.
Post a Comment