Hospitality
Management responses to hotel guest reviews lead to an increase of review stars and a 17% increase in the volume of subsequent reviews.
Compelling Research
The popularity of using reviews to make decisions for just about everything to do with hospitality and travel provides a robust pool of data to conduct research. It is from this industry where we gain some of the most comprehensive and concrete evidence to support the incredible value that businesses can derive from publicly responding to customer feedback
Tip
Analysis suggests that responding to negative reviews boosts hotel scores more than when management responded to favorable comments.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
“Hotel Performance Impact of Socially Engaging with Consumers”
Google Impact Is Growing
Review sites like TripAdvisor have long been the primary source for hotel and travel destination reviews. They have collected an astounding collection of customer feedback (claiming “500 million+ unbiased traveler reviews”).
Facebook and other social media sites were the next large review sources, requiring providers to bulk up their customer service teams to manage social media channel.
Google is not letting this opportunity pass without a fight. They are pinging phones that are locating in hotels to ask for reviews. Google Local Guides are being encouraged to write reviews, answer questions, and take photos of locations. Many national and international chains are now receiving well over 1,000 Googles local reviews per day.