Why get tripped up?

Trip Advisor is now fulfilling the role that was previously the domain of the hotel website! Now guests are just as likely to believe a total stranger on Trip Advisor as they are to believe the content on your own hotel site.

According to Caterer & Hotelkeeper, Trip Advisor influences £500m corporate hotel choices. And the BDRC survey of 1000 business travelers says that 41% of travelers decided to change their original hotel choice after reading reviews.

We have to accept the power of social networking. However well you run your hotel, however dedicated you are to providing the very best of service, there will always be customers who have not had the experience that they were expecting! But this is where responses vary. Every hotel will have its own Trip Advisor policy. Some will ignore the reviews and others will reply to all and any criticism. Personally I feel it is better not to claim the right to silence, but everyone will have a different viewpoint. Whatever approach you decide to pursue you should be confident of one very important thing. People can usually tell the difference between a fair and unbiased viewpoint and a vindictive and unjust attack on a particular hotel.

One hotel where only the very best standards of service, facilities and cuisine are accepted is Chewton Glen www.chewtonglen.com Their Trip Advisor rankings are sky high. But never the less, they appear to reply in great detail to every (and there aren’t many) derogatory comment that is logged against them. Trip Advisor is a great source of information to travelers and should be seen as a positive rather than a negative. Even though it is interesting to see that not all that many hotels promote the site on their own websites. Hopefully that’s more to do with direct booking revenue rather than a fear of poor reviews.

There is no doubt that Trip Advisor appeals in part to a voyeuristic reviewer. There is a strong element of gamification given their reviewer badge advancement system. It’s interesting that guests often cannot be bothered to complain directly to a particular hotel, preferring instead to anonymously complain on Trip Advisor. Or maybe they do both and use the Trip Advisor review as a stick to beat the hotel into submission!

The thing is, Social Networking is here to stay and heralds a new and open way of working with each other. In the past if a hotel was undergoing major building works and didn’t want to flag it for fear of room cancellation, it was their prerogative. Now it’s not! I recently read on Trip Advisor that a guest was awoken each morning by the reverse bleepers on the building site trucks building a new conference centre at a hotel in Arizona. USA. Where ever you are in the world there are no secrets anymore. Everything is out there and those hotels who will enjoy the most success will be those that engage with their customers in an open and honest way…. yes, we are building a new conference centre and these are the steps that we are taking to ensure that our guests are not affected. Oh and in addition we will be making sure that you are compensated in the following ways!

Trip Advisor is now is the world’s largest travel site. If you need assistance with your strategy for engaging with this or other leading social networking sites please contact brett.sammels@lawcreative.co.uk