The Revinate Blog: Success Stories

Success Stories

May 20, 2013

Revinate Success Story: B. F. Saul Company Hospitality Group

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At Revinate, we consistently hear that we help hotels, brands, and portfolios operationalize social media and reviews. We take pride in this news because it means that hotels are finally able to do something that was once very difficult: accurately measure the results of their efforts in social media and even, in many cases, tie bonuses to the results. A great example of a company that has operationalized social content is B.F. Saul Company Hospitality Group. The Hospitality Group operates a portfolio of 20 business class hotels, including 18 that are branded under franchise agreements with Intercontinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Hilton. The B. F. Saul organization fully owns the properties and employs a team of 1,100 enthusiastic hospitality professionals.

One of those professionals is Frank O’Hara, a Cornell graduate that recently moved from a marketing position with the company into an analytics role. In his marketing role, Frank became very familiar with Revinate since his company signed up the portfolio for Revinate service in 2011, and, as a result, became very focused on monitoring and managing their online reviews.

To operationalize the process of responding to reviews, the team implemented a flow chart and workflow for responding to online reviews to ensure that the General Managers responded appropriately to the right reviews. Frank says, “I was in Revinate every single day and I loved it. I would use the ticketing system to assign reviews to General Managers and then proofread their management responses to ensure they were in-line with our standards. Responding to reviews is critical for a good service recovery experience and it was great to play a role in that process.”

Recognizing the growing importance of positive online reviews for hotels, B. F. Saul created a landing page, www.reviewourhotel.com, to allow guests to easily access the correct review pages for each hotel and restaurant in the portfolio. The site, in conjunction with an internal contest to drive results, led to solid growth in the amount of reviews the properties received, which had the added benefit of driving many hotels up on TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index.

Understanding the competitive nature of hoteliers, the hospitality group has launched a series of contests across the portfolio to get the GMs and operations teams excited about their online reputation. The first contest was all around TripAdvisor. Frank tracked the Popularity Index and percentage of people that would recommend the hotel and developed a composite score that would be comparable across properties in different TripAdvisor markets. When he launched the contest, seven hotels were below five in their markets and by December of the same year, those seven were in the top five in their markets. Frank says, “This growth was, in my opinion, due to constant engagement and reminders, from me, to be cognizant of TripAdvisor and its impact on the hotel. Treating each guest as a potential review writer drives staff to perform better. And, seeing how the hotels were ranked every month provided the competitive push that many GMs needed to really pay attention.”

When it comes to making data-driven decisions, B. F. Saul relies on Revinate’s Sentiment Analysis reporting to bring the voice-of-the- customer data into discussions. Frank O’Hara shares a couple of examples. “We noticed a low sentiment score around internet service for one of our hotels. When we drilled down into the comments around our service, we realized that we weren’t providing good instructions so we created better documentation around how to connect and log in. After making this improvement, we saw the sentiment return to positive.” Sentiment Analysis has also been used to make improvements to front desk teams, transportation directions, HVAC and carpeting at the properties.

In January 2013, B. F. Saul made the decision to add social media scores into the “Big Three Report Card,” the company’s internal guest service scorecard, which is tied directly to incentive plans. Frank says, “As soon as compensation plans are affected, the reliability of data becomes critical. Luckily, we have a lot of confidence in the reporting in Revinate for our social data.” In addition to traditional metrics around Occupancy and RevPAR, the new Report Card also takes into account overall review rating, new reviews per occupied room, custom review response metrics and comp set index on review sites. Frank says, “It’s great that we are now measuring our team across all facets of the business, including reputation. Revinate has not only made it possible, but it has made it easy.”

Posted by Greg in customers, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 13, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Newport Hospitality Group

A couple of years ago, one of Newport Hospitality Group’s General Managers contacted Lizz Chambers, VP of Sales and Organizational Development, to tell her about an incredible demo that he had just seen of a new solution for online reputation management. Always on the lookout for new technology to improve efficiency and drive sales, Lizz pulled together a few general managers to join her on a follow-up call.

Lizz was interested in an automated solution for online reputation management because she was noticing the growing importance of online hotel reviews. She says, “I know just from how I use reviews to validate the quality of hotels that I book, that reading reviews is a common step in the booking decision. I wanted to make sure that our hotels were being presented in a positive light. I also wanted to make sure that new solutions were easy to use and drove time savings.”

Nick Ferris, Revinate’s East Coast Sales Manager, demoed Revinate to the Newport Hospitality team. Since many of the GM’s on the call were currently using a different online reputation solution, Lizz asked them what they thought. The group was overwhelmingly enthusiastic about Revinate, and everyone agreed that it was a far more elegant and feature- rich solution. Given its powerful feature-set and sleek UI, they worried that it would be outside their budget. When the proposal came in at an affordable price, Lizz became a staunch supporter of having the portfolio, mostly branded hotels in the East and South, adopt Revinate.

Lizz took the proposal to the executive committee and demonstrated its value over brand-sponsored alternatives. The team saw her passion for the product and staunch belief that it would dramatically help the hotels increase sales so they agreed to a pilot test of the program.

With Revinate, Lizz monitors the reputation of all the hotels in the region. She relies on her daily alerts to notify her of any new reviews or mentions, and then logs in to Revinate to understand what is happening on property. When she sees something of interest, such as a new lead or a review that needs attention, she uses the ticketing system or email feature to reach out to the properties with suggestions or feedback.

Today, the hotels that are actively using Revinate are performing at the top of their markets. Lizz says, “To see our hotels in the top three on TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index is testament to the value and effectiveness of Revinate. Just look at The Fairfield Inn and Suites in Charlotte. When that hotel started with Revinate it was number 170 on the index. Today it is ranked second. It’s also great to see how active our hotels are when it comes to responding to reviews and using social media to engage with guests.”

Lizz loves that Twitter, foursquare and Facebook pages can all be managed within Revinate. She says, “Consumers seek out hotel Facebook Pages today to understand the personality of the hotel. What is the staff like? What are they talking about? You can’t get the same level of insight from going to the brand Web site. And because you can do everything in one place and it’s easy, our General Managers actually do it and have fun with it.”

Lizz attributes the hotels’ success to what Revinate calls ‘The Virtuous Cycle.’ When hotels begin to pay attention to their reviews, they naturally improve because they start taking feedback to heart and making improvements to improve the guest experience. They respond to reviews to show guests that they care and they train and retrain employees on issues that crop up. They also become smarter about using social media and finding opportunities for sales. As a result of their attention to detail, they get more positive reviews, which in turn drives even more bookings.

Posted by Greg in customers, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 8, 2013

Revinate Success Story: SpringHill Suites Greensboro, NC

Tom Ullring, General Manager of SpringHill Suites Greensboro is an internet sleuth. Using Revinate, he actively monitors forums, blogs, news and social sites to uncover opportunities to drive more business to his hotel. He has successfully reached out to people who have had disappointing stays at other hotels in the area and has even captured group business by reaching out to a family planning a large reunion in the area.

“People are sharing so much information online these days,” Tom says. “If you’re smart and approach them the right way, there’s a lot of business to be won.” For example, Tom was monitoring mentions of his property and came across a Facebook post from a local water park that mentioned hotels in the area. Tom reached out on Facebook to introduce himself and see how the two businesses could work together. Today, as a result of that post, SpringHill Suites is promoted by the park as a preferred partner and is able to sell discounted tickets at the front desk. The partnership has brought some good business to the hotel in the summer months, when it has traditionally been slower, given its more corporate clientele.

Not surprisingly, Tom is very active on review sites as well. He reads and responds to 100% of the hotel’s reviews and actively uses feedback to improve the guest experience. For example, when he noticed that people were complaining about the lack of room service, he didn’t simply brush it aside as criticism that he couldn’t resolve since he runs a select-service property. Rather, he worked with local, quality restaurants in the area to offer room service, and the results have been fantastic, with rave reviews from his guests.

Another example involves complaints about noise transference. Knowing that there’s not much he can do about the building’s construction, Tom decided to be transparent. He began offering ear-plugs at the front desk for his guests that ‘sleep lightly’. By confronting the issue, Tom has seen much fewer complaints about noise in reviews. As a result of his attention to customer service, the hotel consistently beats the competition when it comes to average rating and is ranked #3 out of 74 hotels in TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index.

To encourage online feedback, Tom has gone beyond the traditional TripAdvisor card and provides a reminder card designed in-house. Recognizing that many guests might wait a few days before writing their reviews, he wanted to remind them of the property and the staff, so the card features a picture of his warm staff. As a result, the hotel consistently receives more reviews that it’s competitors, which are all larger properties.

Tom has also found social media to be a great way to forge tighter bonds with his guests. He offers loyalty deals on Facebook and Twitter, and has been running foursquare specials to reward the ‘mayor’ of the property. He says, “It’s always fun when I engage with someone in the digital world and then get to meet him/her in the real world. Social media provides a great vehicle to have fun and get to know your guests a bit more.”

While Tom is certainly very busy running the hotel and managing his online relationships, he is quick to point out that Revinate has actually given him time back in his day to focus on other business. He says, “Thanks to Revinate, I can now spend 30 minutes doing work that used to take me 3 to 4 hours. Revinate is a one-stop shop that helps me do my job faster and better.”

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April 3, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Candlewood Suites Fayetteville, NC

Adam Collier has always been a big believer in the power of online reputation management. Long before Newport Hospitality purchased Revinate across the portfolio, Adam was spending his evenings at home, with his laptop on his lap, scouring online review sites, OTAs, and the Web for mentions of his property, Candlewood Suites, Fayetteville. The process was time consuming but critical to the General Manager who knows that it’s part of his job to know, on any given day, where the hotel stands in the eyes of his guests.

When Adam began using Revinate, he was able to learn even more about his standing in the market. He says, “Once I got into Revinate I was able to learn a lot about the hotels in my area. By reading their reviews and review responses, I was quickly able to see competitive angles. And of course, Revinate’s competitive reports visually show me how we are doing across numerous metrics, which is really helpful for quick gut checks and for reporting. Most importantly, Revinate is incredibly user-friendly and a pleasure to use, so I’m in there multiple times a day.”

Adam uses Revinate’s Sentiment Analysis to understand what guests love at the property and where they might need to focus more time and attention. Some issues, like location, he can’t solve. But he has found that by publicly responding to 100% of reviews, he can show prospective customers that he actively listens for feedback and appreciates it. When feedback is positive, staff is rewarded. If a staff member is mentioned by name, he/she gets a bonus, which encourages everyone on staff to try to make a difference in a guest’s stay. And, of course, when the hotel does receive criticism, the hotel learns more about guests’ expectations and how to improve. Feedback from reviews and Revinate reports are shared in weekly meetings and reviews are often printed and posted in the back office.

Adam also uses the social media features in Revinate to stay top of mind with his guests. He shares useful information about the area with the hotel’s Facebook followers. He says, “Facebook is a great place to update guests and prospects about special events and what’s happening in the community. It’s yet another way to show the community that we’re about more than a booking. We are about a great guest experience.”

To Adam, the data he gets from Revinate is critical to his success. He says, “I’m an overachiever and I like to use data to beat the competition. Revinate not only saves me time, but allows me to do my job better and smarter. I can’t imagine ever going back to the days before Revinate.”

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March 26, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Hilton Garden Inn Savannah Airport

Tommy Beyer, the General Manager of the Hilton Garden Inn Savannah Airport, has been with the property for two and a half years, but with Newport Hospitality for much longer. When Newport Hospitality introduced Revinate to the portfolio for online reputation management, he was more than willing to give up Maestro, which was the product Hilton had put in place for managing online reviews, saying, “Maestro felt antiquated and cumbersome. Revinate is so much easier to use, has so many more features, and is constantly releasing updates with new tools.”

Tommy has always been ahead of his time when it comes to managing online reputation. He was responding to reviews long before his competitors began responding and long before Hilton introduced its brand-wide best practices. He says, “It’s so important to respond to guests and show that you care about their experience. It also helps future guests see that we take feedback seriously, which provides comfort since they know they can expect great service and swift resolution should any issues crop on when they’re on property.”

With Revinate’s ‘reply’ link, responding to reviews is quick and easy. With Maestro, Tommy often went directly to the review site to read and respond to reviews since the service wasn’t user-friendly, but with Revinate, Tommy takes advantage of the platform to respond to reviews. He says, “The beauty is that Revinate makes responding to reviews so easy, so I save a lot of time not having to visit the individual review sites.”

Tommy also accesses Revinate daily for competitive information. Using Social Media Searches, he actively monitors the online chatter around hotels in the area to understand who is winning group business and which groups are coming to town. He uses this information to inform pricing decisions and develop future sales opportunities. The hotel staff also actively monitors where it stands on TripAdvisor through Revinate. With 107 hotels in the Savannah market, Hilton Garden Inn is number four, ahead of many branded luxury and historic properties.

To ensure a high ranking, hotel staff is trained to encourage reviews. They utilize the TripAdvisor cards provided to them and even use QR codes on staff business cards to drive people to the review site. Tommy is planning to have all staff members carry and hand out TripAdvisor cards when complimented by guests and hopes the importance of guest feedback is felt across all team-members at the hotel.

New reviews are shared in the weekly management team meeting and issues raised in reviews are openly discussed and resolved. Tommy adds, “The fact that Revinate is so easy to use, and the fact that we all log-on every day, makes it so much easier for me to do my job and ensure a great guest experience.”

Posted by Greg in customers, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 22, 2013

Social Media Analytics Strategies and Tools

Much to the relief of social media managers, 2013 seems to be the year when more sophisticated social media analytic tools will become widely available. For years, we’ve been faced with a frustrating reality that social media activities were difficult to track, which made the task of setting key performance indicators (KPIs) an arduous task. While the development of new tools is encouraging for marketers, it is still challenging to determine which tools are best for measuring and reporting on your social media programs. We will address this topic in our upcoming free webinar on Tuesday, March 26th.

Social Media Analytics Strategies

In preparation for the webinar, I attended Eye For Travel’s Social Media & Mobile Strategies for Travel Conference. Many of our industry’s digital thought leaders came together for lively, information-rich sessions at the event, yet there was one session that really stood out. Barbara Pezzi, an analytics evangelist from Fairmont Raffles (FRHI), presented on the importance of tracking the right analytics for your social media activities.

During the session, she showed the audience how to properly set up social media tracking URLs in Google Analytics (GA), dug deep into the GA platform to show referral traffic, multi-channel funnels and campaign reports, and provided some very important ideas to keep in mind when measuring the effectiveness of your social media initiatives. Barbara urges us, when setting up our social media tracking, to remember the following:

Tie social media campaigns to business goals and then measure accordingly
Measure our social media results, not our activities (“We don’t get paid to gather Likes and followers; we get paid to convert business.”)
Focus on useful and actionable metrics; if your reporting does not provide valuable insights, revisit your metrics
Start with web analytics before investing in a proprietary solution; without a foundational analytics strategy in place, even the most sophisticated tool will be rendered useless
Accept that we will need multiple tools, as no single measurement platform will provide all the social media analytics needed

Social Media Analytics Tools

Barbara followed up these assertions with a list of useful social analytics tools that are worth trying out, in addition to the Google Analytics platform. (Please note that many of these tools charge a monthly subscription fee and will work most effectively when combined with Revinate’s social media platform.) Barbara’s list includes:

Multiple Social Networks:

Actionly – provides social media monitoring, social integration with Google Analytics and a workflow model for social media management
Consumer Barometer – provides insight into how consumers use online and offline information sources in their purchase process
Crowdbooster – provides real-time Twitter and Facebook analytics, allows users to customize the data range, shows which messages had the highest engagement and identify biggest social advocates
Simply Measured – provides easy Social Media Measurement and Analytics for data-driven agencies and social media managers; offers free reports on Facebook Pages, Twitter profiles, Google+ pages, Pinterest accounts, YouTube channels and Instagram posts
True Social Metrics – inspired by analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, it provides insights on his four “best social media metrics”: conversion rate, amplification rate, applause rate and economic value

Twitter:

Topsy – provides the ability to count searched for terms, topics and hashtags, discover the most influential Twitter users by any topic and measure the exposure of events and campaigns
Tweet Reach – provides analysis of tweets that match searched for terms as well as reports the exposure and reach data for those tweets

Google Plus:

All My Plus – provides social analytics data on your Google+ page profile as well as your page’s followers, circles and communities that you are a member of

Pinterest & Instagram:

Curalate – provides visual analytics of your brand’s images on Pinterest and Instagram at a pixel level to measure conversations around your brand’s visual content
Pin Alerts – provides the same functionality as Google Alerts, where the site notifies you whenever via email whenever a user has pinned content related to your brand or searches you have set up
Piqora – provides a suite of Pinterest analytics on pins, boards, clicks and pages that help brands engage, grow and measure their audience on Pinterest.

Each of the above tools provides useful insight into your social media activities across multiple social networks and can help report on your social KPIs. However, when considering which tools are right for you, remember this Albert Einstein quote that Barbara closed her session with: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” By measuring the results and not the activities, you will be on your way to effectively reporting on your social media efforts.

Posted by Greg in Best Practices, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 18, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Outer Banks Inn

In a beach town, hotels not located on the beach are often at a significant disadvantage when it comes to popularity. But for The Outer Banks Inn, great service and careful online reputation management has allowed the hotel to prosper, despite its location. The Inn is number two on TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index and a quick visit to its listings on review sites and OTAs tells the story why it beats the other hotels in the area.

General Manager, Joshua Roseberry, responds to every review that allows a management response. His responses are honest, sincere and don’t offer excuses. He says, “Responding to online reviews is one of the most important things that I can do to show prospective guests how seriously we take customer service. And it pays off for us. A large number of reservations come from people that read our reviews and see how quickly we respond.” Joshua acknowledges that logging into each review site and OTA individually to respond would be an impossible task due to the time it would take. With Revinate, he not only has the time to read and respond to all of his reviews, but can also spend time reading his competitors’ reviews and understanding how they are performing.

With Revinate’s single dashboard, Joshua is able to quickly identify areas of opportunity at The Outer Banks Inn, based on guest feedback and competitive differentiators. The hotel has used Revinate reports to determine hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital improvements. In 2012 the hotel replaced its linens, improved its breakfast bar, and added hooks to the rooms for hanging up swimsuits and towels. Of the last improvement, Joshua says, “The beauty of online reviews is that guests tell you what’s important to them. I would never have thought about adding more hooks to the rooms but thanks to Revinate Sentiment Analysis, I can easily see what’s important to my guests and make those changes.”

Joshua also relies on reviews for training efforts. Every two to three months he conducts training sessions, using real examples from reviews to explore issues. Luckily cleanliness and customer service are rarely issues, as the Inn trends positively on those qualities. To keep up the positive momentum, Joshua has implemented a bonus structure around online reviews and ties incentives to positive mentions on online review sites. Joshua says, “I love sharing great reviews with our staff as it reinforces our messages around the importance of great service. It’s great for everyone to see the payoff, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that these reviews are seen by thousands of other people looking to book a vacation.”

The hotel has consistently been rated above its comp set, proving that training and customer service is paying off. Understanding the value of reviews to both the bookings process and operations, The Outer Banks Inn encourages reviews in a number of ways. Post-stay emails include a link to write a review, social media cards are visible in all the guest rooms, as is signage around the hotel. Finally, check-out staff is trained to request reviews.

When it comes to other forms of social media, Emily Connor takes the lead. She posts to the hotel’s Facebook Page and Twitter account at least every other day, with content that she thinks her audience will enjoy. She sways towards rich content, photos and videos versus text, and tries to focus messages on the beach. She readily responds to tweets when guests are on site, and retweets messages to ensure that guests know that the hotel is listening across all channels. The hotel has also become active on foursquare, creating check-in specials that reward guests with a bottle of wine. Joshua says, “Social media and location-based-services are great ways to ensure that guests know we are listening and to be remembered for doing things a bit differently.”

As an older, independent hotel located off the beach, Joshua and his team have realized the power of great service coupled with strong online reputation management. He says, “We don’t have the benefit of a central reservation system or brand advertising. We rely on our strong online reputation to drive business and are very pleased with where we are today. Revinate is a big part of our success.”

Posted by Greg in customers, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 9, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Hampton Inn Savannah I-95

Just a few years ago, Jennifer Kovacs, General Manager of Hampton Inn Savannah, wasn’t a big fan of TripAdvisor. She thought it was a site used by disgruntled guests to complain about hotel experiences. Today, Jennifer feels very differently about the reviews giant. She says, “TripAdvisor is an incredibly powerful tool and I have realized that if you actively manage your reviews, the time invested pays off.” A big part of Jennifer’s turnaround was working with Revinate, the online reputation management platform provided, by management, to hotels in Newport Hospitality’s portfolio.

A twenty-year veteran of the hospitality industry, Jennifer knows that staff at highway properties, such as the one that she manages, need to work just a little bit harder to excel at social media and forge a strong online reputation. As a result, Jennifer relies on Revinate’s daily alerts to ensure that she never misses a change in her online standing, whether it’s a new review, a new mention on social media, or a change in sentiment scores.

When a mention merits engagement, Jennifer logs into Revinate to take action. She says, “Revinate saves me so much time. Being able to respond to reviews or any mention across the Web in a single place is incredibly valuable.” Jennifer, like other GM’s with Newport Hospitality, takes the time to read and respond to all reviews, whether they are positive or negative, and knows that it pays off. She explains, “When I am the front desk, I wear a name tag and have heard from guests that recognize my name that they chose to stay with us because of the consideration that I show in my responses.”

To get a real sense for what guests love at the property, and for what might need some improvement, Jennifer uses Revinate’s Sentiment Analysis tool and keyword searches to drill down on topics. Jennifer has used the analysis to implement changes to successfully improve the guest experience. She explains, “Given our location, we get a lot of guests traveling with pets. One thing I learned through the analysis of our reviews is that guests were frustrated with our procedure of checking in with pets because we made them sign a form asking for cell phone information and other details. I realized, when I isolated these reviews, that we didn’t do a good job of explaining why we ask for this information. I retrained our front-desk team to explain that we love having pets but need to collect some information for the safety of the pet. Once people understood why we were requiring the information, we heard much less about it in reviews.”

Jennifer also appreciates the competitive information that she gets from Revinate. In addition to learning more about her competition by reading their reviews, she actively monitors social media for mentions of these hotels. Once, when a disgruntled guest complained about an experience at a neighboring hotel, she reached out on Facebook and invited the man to give her hotel a try next time. He accepted her invitation and has been back to stay at Hampton Inn four times.

In addition to listening for feedback about competitors’ hotels, Jennifer also uses Revinate to monitor social media, blogs and the web in general for any mentions of groups, associations or businesses coming to Savannah. She says, “There are so many sales opportunities available today to hoteliers that think a bit differently and use the tools available to them. Revinate helps us find leads and understand who is traveling to our city. There is some real power there.”

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March 1, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Menin Hotels

Menin Hotels is a hospitality management and development company, with a reputation for maximizing assets and a portfolio of proven results in upscale lodging as well as lifestyle restaurants. Menin Hotels is comprised of an in house team representing the top echelon of each respective discipline within hotel operations and management.

Samantha Rosen was brought on to take Menin Hotels to the next level with social media and online guest relation management. Luckily Menin Hotels had invested in Revinate, providing her with all the tools needed to be successful. Excited about the opportunity to forge closer relationships with guests and improve the online presence of the hotels and restaurants, Samantha got to work.

Before getting started, Samantha turned to the free resources that Revinate provides to clients. She says, “I consumed every blog article, guide, best practice document and tutorial that was available. This content became the foundation that helped me get organized and create my vision for how Menin Hotels would be successful.”

To begin, Samantha took responsibility for responding to reviews on behalf of the properties. She says, “While at first it seemed like a daunting task to respond to reviews for over 5 properties, Revinate made it really simple by providing all the reviews, across all the properties into a single corporate dashboard and displaying a ‘reply’ link next to any review where a management response is allowed.”

As Samantha caught up on the reviews backlog, she created accounts for each property’s General Manager so they could respond to their own reviews. Since many of them weren’t yet bought into the idea that management responses impact consumer booking decisions, Samantha again turned to Revinate’s wealth of educational content to create a presentation that illustrated why it was so critical to respond to reviews. She also provided her own suggestions around showing the brand’s personality in responses.

Today, Samantha reports that the hotels and restaurants from Miami to Chicago are doing a great job managing their reviews with Revinate. Since beginning with Revinate in 2011, the Menin Hotels portfolio has expanded with three more properties, and all launched with a close eye to reputation. As a result of this focus, Menin Hotels’ properties are receiving more positive reviews and the hotels are improving on TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index. One of the portfolio’s newer properties, Gale South Beach, started at 78, and after only two months has gone to 39, where it sits with the top 25% of hotels in the Miami Beach market.

To share results with owners, management, and other hotel staff, the marketing team compiles a weekly email with stats from Revinate to show how the hotels are faring online. Samantha says, “With Revinate, we have access to every review site so I’m confident in the numbers that I share and thankful for how easy it is to assemble the individual property reports.” The reports contain information about review frequency, percentage of positive reviews, any trending topics in the reviews, and any employees that were mentioned. Samantha notes that employee recognition has become a great incentive to encourage great service. She says, “In addition to receiving a gift card, employees know that the ownership and management teams have been notified about their performance.”

Social media is also an area of focus for Menin Hotels. They actively monitor what is being said about the properties using Revinate’s Social Media Search feature. She says, “It’s amazing to see all the travel-related blogs out there that include reviews and mentions of our hotels that sometimes get overlooked by other notifications.” Samantha is always on the lookout for guest photos posted to the Web and when she sees any through the Revinate dashboard, she quickly engages to re-share the content on the hotel’s Facebook page.

Moving forward, Menin Hotels is looking to do even more around social media, with plans to monitor foursquare check-ins and try to surprise and delight guests on property when they share their location or tip with their networks. She says, “We have come so far in such a short time, and now that everyone is on board about the importance of reputation management and using Revinate, I can’t wait to see where we can take it and how much more we can improve.”

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February 11, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Fens Hoteles

Fen Hoteles, a Latin American hotel franchising and management company, is one of the region’s premiere hotel business developers and managers. With a portfolio of managed hotels, Fen Hoteles has two differentiated brands: Esplendor and Dazzler. While Esplendor properties promise a unique boutique hotel experience that is characterized by innovative and sophisticated style, Dazzler hotels offer a comfortable four-star experience catering to a wide array of guest preferences. What is consistent for both hotel chains managed by Fen Hoteles is a high quality product that offers exceptional value at the respective price points.

With such a solid foundation in the market, why the need for Revinate? Facundo Oliva, who oversees the portfolio’s online marketing initiatives, explains, saying, “With a portfolio of seventeen hotels and resorts to look after, I needed a time-saving online reputation solution that could keep all of our reviews and online content in one centralized place.” Given the portfolio’s geographical diversity – with hotels in Argentina, Uruguay, Panama and Paraguay – Oliva admitted that “it was time to optimize” the way the company digested and interpreted all of the user-generated and social content about their hotels across the web.

Before becoming a Revinate client in mid-2012, Oliva was laboriously auditing various online review sites and social networks on an individual basis. She says, “We were manually checking a list of different websites consistently and the hotel managers were responsible for responding to reviews that we assigned to them. This tedious process sucked valuable time and energy from the management team’s day, and left no time to analyze recurring review trends at the hotels.”

Since signing up for Revinate service, Oliva has saved countless hours that can now be invested in actioning two previously secondary priorities: assigning the right inidividual to handle review responses and digging deeper into the review sentiment scores for each of Fen Hoteles properties. Oliva explains, “Today the head of communications at each hotel responds to reviews to ensure consistency of brand voice, but only after liaising directly with operations team members. Revinate’s ticket assignment functionality has made this process painless.” Given the disparity and distance between each of the properties, Oliva is grateful for this streamlined communication protocol, saying, “every reviewer who took the time to comment on our facilities deserves a warm and personalized response.”

This renewed attention to online reviews is paying off. Since beginning with Revinate, ten Fen Hoteles properties have already seen positive increases to their average online review scores, most notably the Dazzler Flats Quartier Basavilbaso, which has seen an 11% increase in positive reviews year-to-date over last year’s numbers. Moving forward, the company looks to continue this positive momentum by taking operational action on areas to improve, as highlighted by Revinate’s sentiment analysis reports. Oliva says, “I am very excited about Revinate’s sentiment analysis reports. Being able to review centralized customer feedback, identify what areas we need to improve on, and re-think new operational procedures will make us even stronger than we are today.”

Posted by Greg in customers, Hotel Examples, Success Stories, What's New | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Revinate Blog

Success Stories

May 20, 2013

Revinate Success Story: B. F. Saul Company Hospitality Group

April 13, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Newport Hospitality Group

April 8, 2013

Revinate Success Story: SpringHill Suites Greensboro, NC

April 3, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Candlewood Suites Fayetteville, NC

March 26, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Hilton Garden Inn Savannah Airport

March 22, 2013

Social Media Analytics Strategies and Tools

March 18, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Outer Banks Inn

March 9, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Hampton Inn Savannah I-95

March 1, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Menin Hotels

February 11, 2013

Revinate Success Story: Fens Hoteles

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