Revinate, the hospitality industry’s undisputed leader in
reputation management, announces the launch of inGuest™
Surveys, creating the first true 360° approach to guest
feedback. The new product, already in use by hotels across the globe, fully
integrates modern, innovative guest surveys with Revinate’s market leading online
review and social media solution. With over 20,000 hotel customers, Revinate is
now helping hospitality businesses fully harness the power of guest feedback to
improve operations, engage with customers and drive more bookings.
With inGuest Surveys, Revinate can now turn hotel guests
into an army of advocates. Where solicited feedback was once considered only
private intelligence, inGuest Surveys allows leading hoteliers to cash in the
currency of feedback, using it to drive exposure and new bookings.
Feedback has always been the lifeblood of successful
hospitality companies. The growing popularity of online reviews has shown that
consumers prefer to write free-form reviews describing their hotel experiences.
Reviews also provide hoteliers with a rich source of feedback that can be used to
improve operations and, ultimately, guest satisfaction and loyalty. In fact,
well over 90% of travelers worldwide say online reviews have an impact on their
booking decisions (TripBarometer, March 2013).
With inGuest Surveys, Revinate improves on traditional post-stay
surveying methods with an innovative, social approach inspired by online
reviews. inGuest Surveys includes a customizable survey that
is remarkably easy to manage and deploy. Revinate’s new product also allows
guests to share their experiences on social networks such as Facebook and
Twitter. This social sharing not only appeals to today’s travelers, it is also
designed to drive more online exposure and bookings for the hotel. In addition, inGuest Surveys can also be
easily and automatically published on hoteliers’ own web sites, improving site
engagement, SEO and booking conversion rates.
inGuest Surveys is
tightly integrated with reviews from online travel agencies and review
sites across the globe, and analyzed with powerful yet intuitive sentiment analysis
technology. This complete 360° view will help
hoteliers quickly understand what guests love about the property and what needs
to be improved, regardless of whether the feedback was published on TripAdvisor,
booking.com or any other review site, or solicited directly through inGuest.
Jay Ashton, Revinate co-founder and CEO says, “Today more than
ever travelers love to provide feedback, and they do so for two main reasons; to
feel empowered and influence other customers, and because they genuinely want to
improve a product. Traditional surveys
will only meet the second need. A
streamlined digital survey that is inspired by online reviews, and that has
social-sharing capability, has more to offer.
It can meet the needs of hotels to ask specific questions and the needs
of customers to influence other people, providing both critical business
intelligence and online marketing exposure.”
Kelly Wouters, DotCom Manager at The Hotel Brussels, has been
using inGuest Surveys since March. She says, “After using Revinate for online
reputation management and seeing the impressive difference that it made across
our organization, I was very excited to use inGuest Surveys. By combining our unsolicited
feedback from social media channels and multiple review sites with solicited surveys
from verified guests, we now have an even more powerful solution for tracking
what matters to our customers, allowing us to make impactful changes that
impact guest satisfaction. We can automatically
share that feedback on our website and post it on Facebook and Twitter to
increase conversion rates and drive more bookings. But, what’s really great is
that we can now check all our customer insights in one place, making it very
easy to take action and improve our service, which benefits our guests,” Kelly
adds.
When I talk about online reputation management, I often say that power has shifted to the consumer in the age of social media. While at first this sounds like bad news to the hotelier, it's not. The shift simply means that marketing must be done in a new way.
Here is how I like to think about it: in this new age of public reviews and social media, hotel guests now own a critical piece of a key hospitality marketing channel, but it's important to note that they only control the delivery of the message. They do not own the content of the message. The message is still controlled by you. If you provide incredibly great guest experiences, that becomes the message that guests will communicate for you. In other words, the communication of your marketing message, which once required hefty media buys, has now in part been naturally outsourced to guests as they turn more and more to social media to share their experiences. It's also important to note that your message is now a very true, unvarnished and transparent reflection of the service, amenities and facilities you provide. So while you still control it, you have less opportunity to "spin" it.
Before social media, hoteliers were able to market their properties with fancy photos and catchy marketing verbiage. Today, consumers turn to friends and networks for information on hotels. They seek out and validate options on Twitter and Facebook and review sites and OTAs such as TripAdvisor, Priceline and Orbitz. Because consumers own the communication, a hotel's reputation is now a more direct and true reflection of service, quality, facilities, value and more.
This shift presents incredible opportunities for a savvy hotelier because WOM (word of mouth) marketing is now more powerful and viral than ever. A hotel that excels at quality and service will drive new business organically. And hotels that can create special experiences that get guests talking will be especially rewarded. With the prevalence of SmartPhones, a guest's moment of joy can be tweeted on Twitter and shared on Facebook or Google+ in just seconds to thousands of people. (Here's a good example from my recent trip to Texas.)
On the flip side, hotels that might have operational issues will know as soon as a review is written about perceived problems and shortcomings. If a program is put in place to manage reviews and route feedback appropriately, hotels can quickly fix issues and improve their reputations. (It is for this reason that we added a ticketing system to Revinate.) To avoid problems before they hatch, I always advise hotels to really examine their Web sites and business listings to make sure it mirrors the experience. A fancy 'spin' or misleading photos will only lead to disappointment, which you can be sure will arise in the review when the guest does what he does best - - tell it like it is.
Guess what, hoteliers? The Priceline customer is likely driving down your average review rating. I see it all the time when I train customers and we look at Revinate's Reviews Overview page. Priceline ratings are usually substantially lower than other review sites. And once we uncover this fact, the next thing I usually hear is, "Frickin' Priceline customers. They expect a five-star experience on a two-star budget." Sound familiar?
Should you blame the customer for expecting a great experience at your hotel and then giving you poor feedback when he is disappointed? I don't think so. Rather, you should blame yourself for happily using the channel to sell extra inventory but then treating Priceline guests differently than your other guests. The bottom line is that you can't have it both ways.
I hear it all the time. "Why should someone paying $100 get the same room as someone paying $300?" Why? Because you decided it was OK to sell a room for a $100 and now you need to make sure that the customer is happy. Daniel Craig talks about the Cycle of Positivity which applies here. A happy customer will lead to a great review which will lead to more bookings. An unhappy customer will lead to a bad review which will hinder bookings. It's a simple concept, yet so easy to screw up.
So what do I suggest? When a Priceline guest checks into the hotel, be welcoming and transparent. I suggest you say something like, "Welcome. I know you didn't specifically choose this hotel but I hope we can exceed your expectations. If you need anything or have any questions, please let me know. I have you in room 1012, which provides a courtyard view. Will that work?"
Upon checkout, remind the guest that he will be receiving a link to write a review on Priceline. Tell him that you hope he had a great stay and would be willing to share his feedback with others.
Care to differ? Let me know below in the comments section.
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