The Revinate Blog

Help Responding to Reviews

This month, Daniel Edward Craig and I launched a Webinar series called the Review Clinic. You can see the recording from our first event in the previous blog post. The next free, online event will be Thursday, July 28th at 9am pacific/12pm eastern. Please sign up here.

We created the event because we know that many hotel professionals are still not comfortable responding publicly to reviews and we wanted to help. We invited hoteliers to submit reviews that they wanted us to discuss during the live event. Since we aren't able to cover every review that was submitted, I thought I would share some runners-up in the blog. Here is one review, copied exactly as it was submitted but with hotel names removed. (In other words, the spelling and grammar errors are not mine.)

"We arrived in the late afternoon. it was nice since the girl behind the desk had our info ready to it was a breeze....they gave us the gov rate - even though it was more expensive then their normal rate...which they changed when asked. We found out at check in that parking was 12 dollar and it was valet. Left the car and grabbed my bags...went to my room to have a shower. Room is nice, nothing special....nothing special....no Flat screen....looks like 1980's happend yesterday....the decor is dated.....and I think we were the only ones in the hotel. When I came back downstairs, my car was still in the drive way..with door open.....the valet being also the bell boy and the concierge....when asked about the car, he said he was busy - talking to the blonde girl behind the front desk. Finally parked the car. When we came back at 21:45 at night, we found the front ready for breakfeast, the staff giglling with some type of a husky dog in front...and we the only people in the hotel. For 175$ a night...and 12$ for parking...200$....WTF!!! .....the X Hotel, which is next door, and is far above this hotel was only 120$......seriously ....what a joke..."

Here is how I would go about writing a response:

First, there are a lot of topics mentioned in the review and you don't need to (and shouldn't) address all of them. Why? If you responded to each critique you would have to explain your policy on rates, parking fees, decor, occupancy, staffing, pets etc. Your response should be brief and to the point. Think of your response as signing a guest book with a thoughtful, genuine note. You want to send the message that you were there and you care, but you don't need to share your whole life story there. Likewise, you don't need to get into a debate on every point mentioned in the review. My advice is to pick one item and address it, without being defensive so it's clear you are not writing a form letter.

Second, this guest is upset and whether or not you did anything wrong, you need to apologize. He chose to spend his money at your hotel and your goal is to meet or exceed his expectations. If he's not happy, you should be sorry. You should also thank him for taking the time to write a review, even if it's not a positive one.

Third, you want to make sure that people that see this review know that you are reading them and using them to improve your operations so let them know that you use reviews to retrain employees, or as a basis for future operational changes.

Finally, let him know that you are in charge and you want to do better next time.

So here is how I would respond:

"Thank you for taking the time to write a review, and I am so sorry that your experience with us in June was disappointing. We take all guest feedback very seriously, and we're constantly improving all aspects of our service and facilities. We even use online reviews to retrain employees, so rest assured that your valet trouble won't happen in the future. I hope you will consider staying with us again so that we can demonstrate the level of service that we are known for. If you do plan to be in the area again, please contact me directly by asking for the general manager and I will personally oversee your stay. Thank you. Jane Doe, General Manager"

As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

 

Review Clinic - Webinar Materials Available for Download

Thanks to everyone that joined us on the Webinar this morning to discuss responding to online reviews. A special thank you to Daniel Edward Craig for his expertise and to everyone that submitted reviews for us to look at.

If you were able to attend the event, please provide your feedback in the comments section. We would love to host these events on a regular basis but we want to ensure we're covering the most important topics. Our next Online Review Clinic will be on July 28th at 9am Pacific/noon Eastern. Sign up here and let us know what reviews to cover.

If you would like a copy of today's presentation, you can download it here. Please feel free to forward it to colleagues as well. And if you would like to view the Webinar in its entirety, please watch it below.

Revinate Success Story: Parc 55 Wyndham

 

Thanks for checking out this Revinate Success Story. You may download a PDF version of this article. Please check out additional success stories, and contact us for more information about Revinate.

Parc 55 Wyndham hotel is a 1000+ room property located in the heart of San Francisco’s bustling shopping and business center. The hotel caters to both business and leisure travelers looking for luxurious accommodations in a prime location. Parc 55 Wyndham is managed by a subsidiary of Highgate Hotels, L.P., a management company that takes online reputation management very seriously. In May, 2010 the management company did a review of their reputation management solution mandated at the property level. The previous solution, ReviewAnalyst, was replaced by Revinate at its 30 hotels, including Parc 55 Wyndham.

Rob Robinson is the Director of Operations at the property. Once he saw Revinate, he was very pleased with the switch. He says, “Revinate really is a one-stop shop for managing a hotel’s online reputation. I can easily monitor what is being said and track our success against the competition. The software is easy to use, comprehensive and includes better features than we had with our previous solution.”

Rob uses Revinate daily to manage the hotel’s reputation. He responds to all negative reviews from within Revinate and appreciates how easy it is to engage on the review sites and OTAs. And his efforts don’t go unnoticed. He often hears from guests that they are impressed by how closely the hotel monitors its feedback and how quickly staff respond to reviews. This attention to detail has been a factor in new bookings.

Rob also uses the Revinate Scorecard and Trend Analysis features to report on month-end standings and share successes with the team. The Keyword Analysis report has been instrumental in providing insight into issues at the property. He says, “It’s really helpful to be able to see the words that come up most often in our negative reviews. This report has been instrumental in identifying trends and taking care of operational issues that were negatively impacting our guests.”

Julia Schurman, Sales and Executive Office Manager, is another key Revinate user at the property. She manages the social media program at Parc 55 Wyndham. She says, “I am in Revinate every single day to see who is talking about the property on social media sites and across the Web. I use TweetConcierge to see what people are saying about our property, our competitors and San Francisco in general. It’s so easy to quickly navigate from topic to topic and engage.”

In addition to using social media to drive loyalty by welcoming guests that tweet and to surprise and delight active social media users that she knows will be on site, Julia has proven that attention to social media pays off financially. She says, “The hotel won a substantial piece of business from Twitter. I had posted pictures of our meeting space and a planner looking for a hotel venue saw them, contacted sales, and booked with us. Real business is being done on social media today and it’s great to be at the forefront.”

Revinate Success Story: Paradise Point Resort & Spa

 

Thanks for checking out this Revinate Success Story. You may download a PDF version of this article. Please check out additional success stories, and contact us for more information about Revinate.

In August, 2010, Destination Hotels and Resorts took over the management of Paradise Point Resort & Spa in San Diego. At the time, the resort’s TripAdvisor Popularity Index was at 121, (out of 249 hotels) smack dab in the middle of its market and at the bottom of page four on TripAdvisor for San Diego hotels. Less than a year later, the hotel has gained 59 points and is ranked 62. Paradise Point Resort & Spa can now be found on page two of TripAdvisor’s San Diego listings and it continues to see gains.

Dana Flower is the Marketing Manager responsible for social media at the property. She attributes the hotel’s recent success on TripAdvisor to a hotel-wide effort to increase its ranking by focusing on creating an excellent guest experience, which in turn drives great reviews. Revinate plays a large role in tracking its success and enabling staff to act immediately to improve operations and engage with customers. Dana says, “The bottom line is that if you provide a spectacular service and guest experience, the rest will follow naturally.  We’ve rallied our entire staff behind this effort by sharing great reviews via email and in staff meetings, announcing any and all changes in ranking, and setting monthly and yearly goals for our ranking, number of reviews, and ratings, which is really easy using Revinate. These activities create an atmosphere of excitement and importance, and keep the staff motivated to provide great service because they can see how their actions and quality of work are directly connected to our public reputation.”

When it comes to encouraging reviews, the property reaches out to guests both on and off property. The hotel staff is armed with personalized versions of the TripAdvisor card and when they come across guests who are clearly experiencing a great stay, they engage and encourage the guests to write reviews. In addition, when Dana receives a comment card that has high scores, she replies, thanks the guest and provides a link to share the feedback publicly on TripAdvisor. While the activity may be time consuming, Dana says, ”It’s definitely worth it in the end as many of the folks that I reach out to do post reviews.”  

Dana also uses Revinate to monitor social media and the Web in general to find happy guests. She says, “If a guest posts great things about the property on Facebook, Twitter, or our blog, I privately contact him to thank him for the comments and provide a link so he can share his experiences on TripAdvisor.”

Dana believes that the property’s investment in its online reputation is paying off in many ways. In addition to providing a higher level of service on-property, she says, “I believe the money we invest in TripAdvisor Business Listings and “Check Rates” features is going much further due to our improved ranking and quality of reviews.”  

Thoughts from The HSMAI Revenue Optimization Conference

I'm not a revenue manager but I get to work with many of them in my role at Revinate. Revenue Managers are data driven and approach problems in an analytical way. They are often blown away by Revinate because it takes unstructured guest feedback and makes order of it by finding trends and easily allowing you to see quantitative analysis of how your property is doing against the comp set. (Or, if you are a corporate user, which properties are leading your portfolio and which ones might need an extra hand.)

Yesterday I attended HSMAI's Revenue Optimization Conference. I attended the event last year but our software was relatively new and we didn't have nearly the customer-base that we have today. It was amazing to hear people talking about Revinate, both in the sessions and in informal conversations about technology.

I wanted to share my five take-aways from the day:

• Step up: Many speakers mentioned that revenue managers need to make more market aware business decisions and take a larger role in the organization. They were encouraged to try to stimulate demand, not just crunch numbers. Since they are at the convergence of social media, distribution and revenue management, they are in a unique position to try new things and really make a difference. Revenue managers were urged to work on their communication and persuasion skills to become leaders.
• KISS: There was a lot of talk about how hard it can be to bring in new technology, especially if there isn't a culture of adopting new things. Hoteliers urged technology providers to keep things simple, versus throwing too many features into products.
• Despire Google's plea that it's just a content aggregator, there is concern that Google search results display OTA prices first, often driving people to book off the brand.com Web site. With the acquisition of ITA, many hoteliers wonder if Google might look at a hotel booking engine next.
• While there was some animosity expressed at Expedia for how long it takes for hotels to be paid for bookings, Amy Severson, the Director of Strategic Accounts make the point that hotels don't realize how much it spends on behalf of the hotel in advertising fees, search fees and credit card fees.
• A new consumer service has hoteliers gasping for air. The service allows you to book a room at a hotel but then allows other hotels to bid for your business. If you can get a better rate, you cancel and book elsewhere. Talk about creating competition.

All in all, an interesting event.

The Review Doctors Are In! (Live Webinar Announcement)

The Review Clinic is Open!

Has your property received a guest review that makes your blood boil or heart sing? Want to respond but not sure how to make it sound professional and sincere? Fear you might make things worse?

The review doctors are in.

Every month Daniel Edward Craig and Michelle Wohl will host a free, one hour Webinar devoted to your review questions. In each review clinic we will pick a handful of reviews submitted by hoteliers for discussion.

You’ll learn tips and techniques for winning over travelers with thoughtful responses to negative, positive and mixed reviews. We’ll show you how to strike the right tone, use effective vocabulary, and handle reviews that contain false information.

Here’s how it works:

Register for the Review Clinic and submit a link to the review you would like to discuss on the program. If your review is selected, we will confirm your participation in advance of the live session. If you have already responded to the review, we will discuss how you did. If you haven’t responded yet, we will discuss the best way to respond. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, just let us know.

Prefer to just listen in and learn from others? No problem. All participants will be muted save for those confirmed in advance as webinar guests.

The next Review Clinic is Tuesday, June 28th at 9:00am Pacific Time.

The following one will be Thursday, July 28th at 9:00am Pacific Time.

Register here for the June event. (Even if you can’t make the call register for the event and we will send you a link of the recorded Webinar to view on your own time.)

Register here for the July event.

About the hosts:

Daniel Edward Craig is a former hotel general manager turned online reputation management consultant. A prolific author and blogger, he is currently a featured speaker at TripAdvisor’s Master Class events. www.danieledwardcraig.com.

Michelle Wohl is the VP of Marketing and Client Services at Revinate. Her articles about customer service and social media are published regularly on hospitality sites and on the Revinate blog (http://blog.revinate.com).

TripAdvisor Highlighting Reviewers' Experience

I received an interesting email from TripAdvisor this morning. The review site is now sharing a 'reviewer badge' next to reviews so readers can see how much review experience the author has. The more reviews that you write, the more impressive your badge will be. For example, with eight reviews under my belt, I am a Senior Reviewer. My goal is to be a Top Contributor.

Badges have become a popular way to encourage participation and share clout. Location-based services, for example, have made acquiring badges part of the fun of checking in. I am looking forward to seeing whether displaying a user's badge on TripAdvisor drives more reviews.

For the hotelier, badges will allow you to see how experienced a reviewer is and whether he/she is writing a one-off review or considers himself/herself a review and travel expert.

Online Reviews are Popping up Everywhere

Many thanks to the client that shared this screenshot from Delta's Sky Miles redemption site. As you can see, third party booking engines like Sky Miles are now putting TripAdvsior results prominently in front of customers.

If you're not already obsessed with your hotel's online reputation, it's time to get control. Need help? Email info@revinate.com.

How to be Remarkable Using Social Media

Yesterday during my session at the PRSA conference in San Antonio, Texas, I was asked what hotels can do to increase review volume. First, I explained that hotels need to come out and ask happy guests to write reviews. The best time to do that is at checkout or in email, when the guest returns home. Then I remembered something that Daniel Craig says a lot and I told the audience that they should also "be remarkable". In other words, give your guests something to write about.

Joie de Vivre has put a program in place around being remarkable called the DreamMaker Program. According to its Web site, the program "encourages our line-level employees to go the extra mile for guests in order to transform them from simply satisfied customers into genuinely loyal guests." Read some examples of dreams that were made here.

A few days ago, one of our partners, BCV, forwarded me a link to a blog post written by a woman who had a remarkable experience at the InterContinental Hotel Times Square. A joint Revinate and BCV client, it was great to see how the hotel was using technology and old fashioned hospitality to surprise and delight its guests by monitoring Foursquare and other social networks, engaging and rewarding. And it's proof that if you are remarkable to your guests, they will tell others. Read the first-hand account of the experience here.

I followed up with Victoria Zuffranieri at the hotel to get her thoughts about how Revinate helped facilitate their incredible service levels and she said,  “Revinate is a great tool that allows a hotel to listen to the conversations that are taking place about their property as well others hotels throughout various social mediums. Understanding your customer and listening to their feedback are the keys to success and the Revinate tool helps to better deliver this valuable information to a hotel.”

Have your own story to share? Let me know in the comments below.

Revinate Success Story: Greystone Hotels

Thanks for checking out this Revinate Success Story. You may download a PDF version of this article. Please check out additional success stories, and contact us for more information about Revinate.

Greystone Hotels is a well-established West Coast hotel owner and hospitality management company based in San Francisco, with an eclectic range of properties in California and Oregon. An early adopter in using online reviews as a barometer of guest satisfaction, Greystone Hotels has been paying attention to public guest feedback since the first hotel review sites launched.

In July, 2010, Emily Johnson, Manager of E-commerce and Marketing at Greystone Hotels, saw Revinate for the first time and it was love at first sight. Emily recalls, “My first thought was that Revinate was the answer to my problems. For nearly three years prior, I spent at least two days a month manually assembling monthly online review reports for all nine hotels, in addition to daily monitoring and responding to reviews. It was so important, but also an incredibly time-consuming and arduous process.” Two weeks after seeing the product for the first time, Greystone Hotels was up and running.

Revinate was a welcome improvement to the way reviews were previously managed because it provided much more visibility into each property’s online reputation. Rather than having one person at the corporate office manually aggregate data, send out monthly reports and respond to reviews, Greystone could now provide Revinate access to any employee for real-time data and analysis on reviews and online mentions so they could solve issues more promptly and identify new opportunities. Today, front desk staff, sales, maintenance, the revenue department, and GMs, among others, log in daily to the service.

Emily credits the intuitive design and ease-of-use with Revinate’s wide adoption at the properties. She says, “What is so great about Revinate is that there’s nothing to break. All employees are comfortable using it, regardless of their technical prowess. Anyone can go in and slice and dice the data without fear of messing anything up. I only wish other hospitality systems were designed as well.”

Emily also notes that Revinate operates much differently than other software companies in the industry. She says, “I have so many contacts at Revinate now and it’s great to know that I can just pick up the phone to ask a question or have a response to an email in minutes. They have been onsite multiple times to meet with us and share best practices. They also organize networking events that allow us to meet other hoteliers in the industry and provide so much great content on the blog and help desk. I really feel like our success is their number one priority.”
 
Almost a year into service, all nine hotels are using Revinate and finding tremendous value from the solution. With easier access to reviews and better insight into guest satisfaction, Greystone has been able to improve operations as well as scores and rankings on review sites. For example, Revinate’s Keyword Analysis report highlighted outdated televisions at the King George Hotel in San Francisco. With solid proof that guests wanted new TV sets in the guestrooms, Greystone was able to work the expenditure into their capital plans and soon all the rooms will have new flat-panel televisions.

Many properties have also seen improvements in their TripAdvisor Popularity Scores. With better access to reviews, the hotels began a program to encourage public guest feedback on the site, in addition to providing incredible service. As a result two San Francisco properties saw tremendous improvement. Hotel Griffon’s rank went from 108 to 50 and The King George Hotel went from 103 to 88 since the implementation of Revinate back in July of 2010. (San Francisco has 242 properties in the market.) Emily notes that TripAdvisor is driving more bookings today than ever before.

One of the biggest surprises for Emily is how proactive the General Managers are with using Revinate. They all subscribe to Revinate alerts to be notified of new reviews and mentions and Emily notes that they will often contact her about a review before she has even seen it.  Norbert Mede, General Manager of San Francisco’s Hotel Griffon and The Inn at Union Square says, ‘Since signing up for Revinate, we have been able to track in real time the content on the web that directly impacts our online reputation. Using this valuable tool, The Hotel Griffon has been able to improve our position on TripAdvisor from #131 (when I first joined the company in 2007) to #50 and counting today. This has been achieved by providing timely management responses to both positive and negative comments as well as providing my staff daily feedback from gusts on their performance, which in turn motivates them to improve the service they provide. In today’s highly competitive market, our reputation and public perception is key to continued success and growth.”

Scott Woods, VP of Finance and Operations, uses metrics and scores from Revinate in his monthly GM meetings to share best practices, acknowledge success and discuss areas of improvement. He says, “Any time we can improve operational efficiency and drive guest satisfaction, I am happy. While simple to use, Revinate has allowed us to put a process around using online reviews to improve our business, and for that I am very thankful.”