The Revinate Blog

What you need to know about Google+ Local

Last month, Google announced the launch of Google+ Local, a new way to search for and share your favorite restaurants, local hot spots and pretty much every other business you can think of. The launch is the first step in integrating with review site Zagat since the acquisition of the company by Google in September 2011. Although this integration is still in its early stages, we wanted to outline the major effects it will have on hotels and restaurants.

Google Places listings now featuring Zagat ratings
Similar to the Places listings you’ve seen in the past, new local listings feature contact information, images and reviews with ratings with one key difference — the traditional star ratings has been replaced with Zagat’s 30 point rating system. Summarized local listings are displayed in organic Google searches and on Google Maps. Users seeking more detailed information and reviews must sign into Google+ to view the full local listing, complete with a professional Zagat summary and user-generated reviews from both Zagat and Google.

How to manage your Google Places account and respond to reviews
For the time being, business owners can continue to manage their local listing information and respond to reviews via Google Places for Business. As Google continues to enhance local listings, we speculate that there will be closer integration with Google+, requiring all businesses to manage listings and content through a linked Google+ account. If you haven’t already done so, we recommend creating a Google+ Page for your property, as it is likely that Google will undergo a ‘merging’ phase similar to Facebook with the evolution of Places.

What’s to come?
Although it’s not entirely clear where Google is headed with local listings, we noticed a few areas where we could see significant changes in the future.

1. 1. 1. All business will be required to manage content through Google+ — This seems like a logical step for Google, as they continue to look for ways to build the popularity of Google+. In our opinion, having a centralized place to manage content that appears in several different areas on the web is a great way to keep your property’s image and messaging consistent.
   2. 2. Zagat reviews will now accept management responses — In the past, Zagat did not allow managers to respond to reviews posted on the site. We see this changing as Google currently allows for management responses.
   3. 3. Zagat will no longer have a standalone website — In an effort to clear any confusion between the two sites and strengthen Google+, we imagine that at some point, Google will do away with Zagat’s standalone website. This step would again support the push for Google+ to be a central location to mange and find content.

For more information on the evolution of Google+ Local, visit Google and Your Business Blog.

Facebook Introduces 'Offers' for Brands

A few months ago, we partnered with our friends at BCV to bring hotels and restaurants up to speed on the Facebook Timeline rollout to brands. In the webinar we discussed all the key ingredients to creating a hearty Timeline for your brand.

As a true social media enthusiast, I am a huge fan of Timeline and it’s ability to aid in telling your brand’s story – how you came to be and all the interesting milestones along the way. In addition to the Timeline rollout, Facebook also recently launched “Offers,” a free service that allows your brand to post offers to Facebook users (e.g. “enjoy a complimentary dessert with the purchase of two entrees”). Fans that click to receive the offer are sent an email to present to your venue (by printing out or displaying on their mobile device) with the offer and any special restrictions clearly displayed in the email. Special restrictions may include such language as “one redemption per customer per day” to keep someone from printing out 100 copies or other abuse. You can also set limits on these offers, similar to a Groupon or LivingSocial Deal where the offer is “sold out” after a set number of people click to receive the deal, helping to limit your exposure.

Offers are a great way to experiment with your Timeline. Not only can they provide engaging content for your fans that require direct action but they also allow you to tie an ROI back to your Facebook efforts. When setting up an offer, be sure to create proper tracking codes in your PMS/POS that allow your staff to indicate when an offer has been redeemed. As with any marketing campaign, it’s always important to brief your staff on the offer details and define a process for tracking and managing redemptions. In addition, I recommend creating a simple spreadsheet that lists each redemption and the total that was spent by the customer during that visit, allowing you to report on how much additional revenue your offers brought in.

So what do you need to get started? If your business has a local address listed in its profile, admins will see the option to create an Offer in the status bar. Here are the specs for Offers:

• A 90-character (maximum) headline
• A 900-character (maximum — much less recommended!) terms and conditions
• A 90 x 90-pixel square image to accompany the post

I’m always an advocate for building customer loyalty and believe that Offers are a great way to increase your fan base and thank them for their loyalty. So before you jump on the flash-sale bandwagon, why not reward the people that care about your business most? With a simple plan in place, there’s not much to lose with testing out this free service!

Revinate Launches Comprehensive Social Media Solution for Restaurants

San Francisco, CA – December 12, 2011—Revinate, the next generation of guest satisfaction, today announced the immediate availability of its much anticipated restaurant solution. This innovative new solution for restaurants leverages Revinate’s experience as the leading social media solution for thousands of hotels worldwide.  Now, restaurant brands, management companies, owners and operators can benefit from the powerful online reputation platform that global hotel companies such as Hyatt Hotels, Sofitel and Kempinski rely on daily to engage guests and manage guest satisfaction.

Revinate’s restaurant solution provides a single dashboard to manage all online reviews, mobile check-ins and social media mentions, and includes sophisticated trending and sentiment analysis. With Revinate, restaurateurs can now monitor feedback for their restaurants across millions of sites in real time, and then easily engage with customers on top review sites and social networks – the locations where most diners now select restaurants and make reservations. This new service, available for an affordable monthly fee, is designed to be easy enough for any employee to use, regardless of technical ability.

“I can’t think of any software service that is more valuable for an individual restaurant or chain today. I spent 20+ plus years in the restaurant industry in operational roles and I only wish this software was available for me when I was struggling to figure out where our restaurants were strong and where we needed to invest resources. With Revinate, you can easily pinpoint operational problems and fix them before they become serious and costly issues,” says Clark S. Kincaid, Ph.D, Associate Professor at UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration.

Orient-Express’s Jeff Webster, Public Relations and Digital Media Manager, North America, says, “Online review sites and social media are critically important to our business, which makes sense given the passion people have towards food and the research consumers do to discover new restaurants. Revinate saves us an incredible amount of time, aggregating all reviews and review scores into a single location so we can quickly assess guest satisfaction and understand how we're measuring up against our competitors. We can then focus more energy on building brand visibility, engaging with customers and driving new business."

A long-time hotel client, Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants has also been using Revinate’s restaurant solution to manage their restaurants’ online reputation. Jeff Brown, Area Director of Restaurant Operations, says, “Revinate has become a critical tool for us to monitor and track our online reviews. Restaurants are incredibly susceptible to a loss in revenue as a result of bad online reviews so it’s incredibly important to know what people are saying in real time. Revinate allows us to stay in-tune to what people are saying, and allows us to easily act, for example, by publicly responding to reviews or opening tickets to assign responsibility should issues arise that can be remedied.”

“Our restaurant solution was designed in close collaboration with restaurant managers from hospitality companies who have long trusted Revinate,” says Jay Ashton, co-founder and CEO of Revinate. “With thousands of hotels relying on Revinate every day, it’s a natural progression for us to also help restaurants use public reviews and social media to grow their businesses, and we’re thrilled to be launching our innovative restaurant solution today.”

Restaurants interested in learning more can visit http://www.revinate.com/for-restaurants or email info@revinate.com.

About Revinate:

With online guest-generated travel reviews increasing in both number and importance, hotel and restaurant owners and operators have a simple choice: either ignore the cacophony of social media and hope for the best or proactively track and manage what is being said online in a way that deepens customer relationships, strengthens brands and boosts revenue. Revinate’s powerful technology monitors all of the important social media venues – including Twitter, Facebook and TripAdvisor – and provides instant alerts whenever your property or brand is mentioned. Based in San Francisco, Revinate counts the world’s leading hospitality brands as clients. To learn more, please visit www.revinate.com.