A few months ago I spoke with a couple of clients who were struggling with their management responses on TripAdvisor. The first client was in corporate communications for a medium-sized brand and noticed that each property was responding to reviews in a very different way. He felt that the brand was missing a big branding opportunity by ignoring the voice of the brand in the responses. He was interested in providing some guidelines to his general managers around tone and voice. The second client was the GM of an independent hotel who felt like his responses were becoming stale and sounded too professional given the quirky nature of the hotel. He wanted some ideas for sprucing up his responses.
As a result of these conversations we went to work putting together a guide that allows properties and brands to find their voice in external communications. It contains exercises that staff can do together to hone in on what makes their property or brand special, and then provides ideas around language and tone.
By partnering closely with many leading-edge hospitality companies, Revinate is in the unique position to learn first-hand about the social media strategies that work, and don’t work, for the hospitality industry. The Hoteliers Guides are our way of sharing what we have learned with the larger community.
This guide is an introduction for hoteliers who are new to location-based services. The guide will help you understand the opportunity that LBS presents, how to get started using foursquare and other services, and best practices to employ to drive success.
Daniel Edward Craig has published a great article about how the Peabody Orlando Hotel has operationalized public guest feedback by creating a Guest Engagement Committee. Hotels looking for guidance on how to integrate social media into property-level operations will find great, practical examples. Read the entire article here.
Thanks to Benji Greenberg of BCV and Revinate's Linden Freeman for a great Webinar this morning about how hoteliers can use foursquare to drive loyalty and sales.
We received a lot of great questions during the event and Linden's responses are below. Scroll all the way down for a copy of the slide deck and a recording of the Webinar.
If you are offering a Special, how do you monitor the people who want to take advantage of it?
If a person has noticed your Special and wants to redeem it, they have to unlock the Special by meeting the criteria you have set for them (e.g. checking-in three times within a week). They will then need to show their phone screen to one of your employees that indicates they’ve unlocked the special. It’s important to make sure that all of your employees are aware of any Specials you’re offering on foursquare and that they know how to recognize if a Special has been unlocked. Foursquare has a flyer you can share with employees that shows what it looks like when a Special has been unlocked on a user’s phone. (And of course Revinate customers can access the flyers after creating Specials within Revinate.)
The Gowalla application just introduced a new concept of “Travel and Storytelling.” How do you think this could be utilized and could it serve as a better alternative to foursquare?
Gowalla recently launched an updated version of its application, which incorporates two new key areas: travel and storytelling. This update makes them now more of a city travel guide, downplaying the role of check-ins in favor of discovery, travel and storytelling. Checking-in is now just one aspect of the app. When you pull up Gowalla on your phone now, you’ll still see the main activity feed where you can find the activity from your friends. But now, instead of a stream of check-ins, you’ll notice people hanging out together, sharing photos, and talking to each other in smaller groups, which Gowalla calls “stories.” Gowalla is building more than 60-curated city guides that help tell people where to go and what to see. Users are also encouraged to build “stories” out of their travels, which start with their check-ins but can be enhanced by tagging other people and gathering pictures uploaded for particular stories. With this relaunch it seems that Gowalla is trying to differentiate itself from foursquare by moving away from game-based elements, and focusing on local discovery. Since foursquare has such a larger user-base, I feel that it’s still your safest bet. Foursquare also provides businesses with the ability to create and run Specials, which provides real value to customers and a way to entice people to go to your business. It’s important to do your homework though with the different location-based services out there and see if your target audience is using them. If people are actively engaged on Gowalla in your market, then it’s worth claiming your business and paying attention to what people are saying about your location.
You mentioned the importance of being authentic with responses to people who check-in on foursquare, but how do you do this without having any information on this person?
When people check-in to your venue on foursquare, they have the ability to also leave a tip, post a photo and/or share their check-in to their Twitter/Facebook accounts. If you see that someone has posted a tip or a photo, this gives you a little more information about what they think about the venue. Maybe it’s something specific to your hotel lobby – you could tweet back to them that you hope they like the lobby, and why not check-out the view of the beach outside? When people tweet their check-in, they can add a comment about what they're doing. So if the person has linked their Twitter account to their foursquare profile, you could check out the person’s Twitter account and see if they have said anything more specific about what they're doing, which would allow you to customize your response. Otherwise, I think the fact that you're tweeting back to them and welcoming them to your hotel is a great way to surprise and delight them.
How about foursquare in international markets? Is it becoming more widely adopted, or is it mainly just used within the U.S.?
Foursquare is definitely starting to gain more traction in international markets. In February 2011, foursquare announced that they launched five translations of their application - in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Since then they’ve seen that these five new languages represent some of our fastest growing areas internationally. Just recently at the beginning of September 2011, they announced the launch of five more languages (Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, Protugese, Russian and Thai). For more information on their integration of foreign languages, checkout their blog article here.
In case you missed the webinar, you can find a copy of the slides here and a recording below. As always, we would love your feedback on the webinar and would love to know what other topics you would like to see us cover.
Thanks to everyone that turned up for today's Webinar about managing your online reputation. A special thank you to our guest and online review guru, Daniel Edward Craig. Please check out his site for more examples, great advice, and his e-book, Hoteliers' Guide to Online Reputation Management.
We hope that you left the Webinar with a better understanding of the review site guidelines, why you should respond publicly to feedback, and some best practices for responding to reviews.
If you would like to review the materials from today's Webinar or share them with others, you can find a PDF of the slide deck here.You can also find a recorded version of the Webinar below.
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In addition, we would love any feedback about the event in the comments area. Thank you!
Last week I got a call from a client that wanted to discuss the hotel's popularity index score on TripAdvisor. He wanted me to make sure we were accurately reporting the number because he had a hard time believing that despite all their efforts to focus on reviews, they weren't seeing a big uptick on TripAdvisor. I assured him the numbers were correct and explained the popularity index as best I could.
TripAdvisor's algorithm for determining the popularity index score takes into account quantity and quality of TripAdvisor reviews, guidebook ratings and comments from all over the Web. According to TripAdvisor, "the algorithm weights more recent information more heavily." It's a black-box algorithm meaning there's no way to really figure out how much weight each carries and what other factors might go into the mix. It's incredibly frustrating for diligent hoteliers, especially those at luxury properties that set goals to be at the top of the popularity index and find that they are being beaten by two star hotels.
In this client's case, the market contains almost 200 hotels and his comp set, made up of four and five star hotels, ranges from 25 to 78. The number one hotel in this market is a Super 8. The number two hotel in the market is another Super 8. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Super 8 but when you operate a four-star hotel in a major metropiolitan city, it must be very frustrating to see your hotel rank below a budget chain. In fact, The Four Seasons, which I think everyone would agree rates incredibly high in guest satisfaction and exceeding customer expectations is only at 25.
So what should a hotel do in light of the algorithm? Here is some advice:
Don't give up hope. You can improve your score by encouraging reviews and making sure you deliver a great guest experience.
Don't become fixated on TripAdvisor. You will drive yourself crazy trying to figure it all out.
Remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Check your score every week or so, but not every day or you'll lose your mind.
Don't forget that a Four Seasons customer isn't going to stay at Super 8 because it rates higher on TripAdvisor.
Finally, if you can help it, don't set goals based on your popularity index score. It's smarter to set goals based on a transparent number that doesn't include a dash of mystery. Instead, set a goal to always rate higher than your comp set average across the top ten review sites, or even on TripAdvisor. Revinate clients can easily track their success using the Rating Trend report.
And most importantly, don't forget that ratings are extremely important, but don't lose sight of the forest for the trees. Focus on quality and great reviews will follow.
I was in Miami this week meeting with clients and almost everyone I met with asked me whether I think it makes sense to respond to positive reviews. My answer is a resounding 'yes!' With so few hotels taking the time to respond to reviews, any effort on your part to show guests that you are listening and learning from feedback will go a long way. Here are some best practices for responding to positive feedback.
1) Thank the reviewer for taking the time to share his experience at your hotel. People are busy and their efforts should be acknowledged. Here's an example, "I just logged onto my computer and saw your review. It made my day! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences online. It means a lot to me and the staff that you took the time..."
2) Show your personality. A stale, template-like response sends the message that you're just responding because someone told you to. A personal response shows you care. For example, "I am so happy that you enjoyed your spa treatment with Jodie. I can't tell you how many times I walk past the spa and wish I could just slip in for a quick hour with Jodie..."
3) Let the guest know that you will share his feedback with your team and recognize any employees that were mentioned by name. For example, "I was so happy to hear that Charlie, the concierge, provided you with excellent dinner recommendations. (He's my 'go-to' guy for recommendations as well.) I will be sure to share your feedback with him, and the entire team. They love knowing that guests appreciate their service."
4) Encourage the guest to tell his friends and to come back. Encourage him to 'like' you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter to stay abreast of news and specials. You can say, "Please tell your friends about our hotel and come back to see us again. Follow us on Twitter for our weekly specials. We would love to see you again soon."
While it's not rocket science, it does take some time. But it's worth it. I promise.
I see great examples of social media engagement every day. While many of our clients are considered leaders in hospitality social media and have teams in place to manage engagement, many others are just starting to put social media practices in place and might have one person working part time on reviews and other social media platforms. While I do think dedicating resources to social media is money well spent, I realize that for many hotels, this isn’t an option.
There’s no doubt that monitoring your online reputation is important. Reputation management has become its own industry, with agencies and software companies devoted to the cause. But today, the trend is moving from monitoring to acting and engaging. For example, whereas many Revinate clients were content a year ago to have all their reviews aggregated in one dashboard, recently the most often requested features from Revinate clients are alerts and ticketing systems to ensure that every review or social media mention can be acted upon to drive loyalty and sales. These features, launched today, will guide hoteliers to action with "Recommended Actions included in their daily alerts, and a new ticket-based workflow management system.
With action in mind, and to celebrate the rollout of the features mentioned above, here are 3 simple things that hotels can do to make a difference. Each activity only takes a couple of minutes.
1. Respond to an online review or two every day. If you only do one thing on social media you should show your clients and prospective clients that you take feedback seriously by responding to reviews on TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, Expedia and Yelp. With less than 5% of hotels responding to reviews online, it’s the perfect opportunity to shine and show you are customer focused. Respond to both negative reviews and positive reviews. Thank guests for positive reviews and address negative feedback to assure guests that their input will be used to drive operational improvements. According to TripAdvisor, management responses are read more closely than actual reviews, so it’s a great opportunity to turn a negative into a positive.
2. Take advantage of a competitor’s silence. The hotel business is competitive and many hoteliers are simply not taking advantage of all the opportunities that social media provides. For example, I recently saw a tweet from a young woman who announced that she was headed to Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas to gamble. She even used the @phvegas. An hour later, she heard nothing from Planet Hollywood but she did get a tweet from the Las Vegas Hilton saying, “Good luck. But you really should catch the monorail at Bally’s & come game with us.” The next tweet the woman sent was, “Looks like we need to hit @lasvegashilton too! Hoping there is luck in the air.”
3. Welcome a guest who tweets that he’s coming to stay with you. This sounds like a no brainer but I can’t tell you how many hotels don’t respond to these softballs. If you have a Twitter account and you’re not responding to these tweets, I would consider shutting down your account until you have the resources in place to spend a few minutes to welcome guests and ensure they know you’re there for them should a question or need arise. Here’s an example, “Looking forward to having you. Lots to do in SF this week. Let me know if you need help deciding.”
If you have ever been on the receiving end of a review response, or a welcoming tweet, you know how great it is to know that a hotel cares about your stay and is willing to spend a minute or two to personally acknowledge you.
‘Social Media Searches’ is an extremely powerful new system that allows Revinate customers to monitor millions of web sites and social networks for any mention of their hotel, restaurant, competitors or amenities. Social Media Searches can even be used as an incredible prospecting solution to attract new bookings and increase market share by monitoring the web and social networks for anyone asking for hotel recommendations.
Creating searches is quick and easy, and for each search Revinate will monitor millions of content sources in real-time. Social Media Searches comprehensively covers blogs, mainstream news sites, Twitter, Facebook, forums and comments, and even photo and video sites.
Pleasedownload the PDF to learn more about creating optimal social media searches.
Last week when I was QA'ing our newest feature, Social Media Searches, a light bulb went on in my head. We had created what Scott Johnson, our sales director coined an 'opportunity finder' for our clients.
The way Social Media Searches works is that you can create up to 10 searches for your property that are constantly running. Each search is comprised of up to 5 keywords or phrases. The first obvious search is for your hotel name. (Roger Smith Hotel might use the following phrases to ensure it captures all mentions: Roget Smith New York, Roger Smith Hotel, @rshotel, Roger Smith NY.) You should also set up searches for your competitors, your restaurants and bars. That likely leaves one or two searches to play with. I suggest setting up a prospecting search.
A few of our ingenious customers have relayed stories of winning business by doing live searches in Twitter for things like 'napa valley wedding venue recommendation' or 'hotel recommendation las vegas' or 'spa weekend ideas'. Now, with Revinate searching millions of sources including forums, comments, Facebook and blogs in addition to Twitter and news, now is the perfect time to turn social media into a new lead funnel.
For example, I created a prospecting search for one of our resorts in Phoenix. I used the following phrases: Phoenix spa, Phoenix wedding venue, and Phoenix resort recommendation. Within minutes, I began to see the results populating in Twitter, Facebook and on Forums. I was able to see people who were looking for recommendations in real time, for places to stay. We link you directly to the source so you can jump in and show you're listening and you're willing to win the business with a great offer and some reasons why he/she should stay with you.
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