The Revinate Blog

Have You Adopted Transparency as a Mantra?

This week Groupon and flower powerhouse FTD got caught in a very embarrassing situation. It seems they offered a 50% off Groupon but then marked up the flowers on their site so customers weren't getting a deal at all. When they were outed, they denied... and then they apologized and offered a refund. Bottom line is they got caught looking shady. With so many vehicles for sharing real-time information, photos, links and videos, you can pretty much be sure that getting away with anything these days is a lot harder than it was just 10 years ago.

So what are the new rules of transparency? First and foremost, know that you're going to get caught so do everything you can to stay on the straight and narrow path. Think about your billing. Do you charge a resort fee? Is it very clear to guests upon booking that they will be charged an extra fee? If not, make sure it's clear as day. You can be sure that surprised guests will tweet about it and include it in their reviews if they feel swindled at check-out.

Second, don't be afraid to reach out. Hotels are 24-7 operations. It's OK for mistakes to happen but you must be proactive in communicating with guests before issues spiral out of control. If you are the GM, train your staff to alert you to any potential issues so you can handle them when the guest is still on site. The last thing you want is an angry guest returning home and logging onto TripAdvisor to share the bad experience. Often, a phone call apologizing for the error or a small gift with a handwritten apology note can do wonders.

Finally, when negative feedback hits the public channels, you must respond and acknowledge it. In the past, many PR experts advised to ignore public criticism because you don't want to draw attention to negative feedback and get into a sparring match with a disgruntled customer, but today the opposite is true. Not responding sends the message that you don't care about the guest's voice. You need to respond publicly to acknowledge the issue and say you want to make it right. Then, take it off-line with the guest.

When Disaster Strikes

In the last post, I described how I used Twitter and Facebook to ensure I got a seat on a sold-out plane following the East coast blizzard last week. After I published my article my sales colleague, Scott Johnson, pointed out that a few of his international clients were currently using Revinate to manage the fallout from disasters near their resorts.

Explora, a luxury resort in Chile, used Revinate to monitor social media buzz during the gas riots in Patagonia last month. Using Revinate's Social Media Searches, they monitored the Web for people discussing the unrest due to rising gas prices and travel issues in the region. They used keywords such as 'protests natural gas Chile,' 'standed Chile,' and 'stuck in Patagonia' to monitor the state of the region and the mood of tourists. They used Twitter to share stories from guests who were stranded at the hotel but had incredible experiences as a result. They also used the real-time news vehicle to share information about the strike. Then, when the strike ended on January 18th, they used Twitter to communicate the reopening of the hotel, tweeting, "Strike in Patagonia ended. Explora Patagonia to receive travelers starting tomorrow Jan 19. Thank you for your concerns, patience & support."

Last week Hamilton Island, (@hamiltonisland) located near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, turned to Revinate and social media to monitor for news and buzz around Cyclone Yasi and Cyclone Anthony, which threatened to cause the evacuation of the island. They used Twitter to report on the damage, which was minimal, and share updates with the community and worried family members of guests that "all guests, residents & staff are fine."

And of course, we read a few days ago how Chicago hotels such as The Peninsula Chicago and Hyatt Regency Chicago have been using Twitter and Facebook to announce special blizzard rates targeted at commuters and provide information about the storm. If you missed that story you can read it here.

Is your hotel prepared to use social media to monitor buzz and help guests and the community should disaster strike? You likely have an emergency response plan in place should there be a fire or other disaster. But if your plan doesn't include social media communication, perhaps it's time to update the plan with your social media objectives and strategy. There is no better real-time news service for communicating with guests and spreading news virally.

Revinate and the Chicago Blizzard

This week's blizzard has both travelers and hotels buzzing on social media. Everyone, it seems, turned to social networks to share weather war stories and get real-time information. When my flight from JFK to SFO was canceled on Wednesday morning, I turned to Twitter and Facebook when high call volumes kept me from reaching Virgin America on the phone. Within an hour, I was rebooked on a new flight.

And I'm not alone. In fact, Revinate and some of our Chicago clients, including Hyatt Regency Chicago and the Peninsula Chicago were mentioned in a great article on the blog, 435 Digital, about how hotels can use social media to help stranded travelers. The article will run tomorrow in the Chicago Tribune. Read it here today.

What Would Sir Richard Branson Do?

At the end of September, Sir Richard Branson announced that he is getting into the hotel business. He plans to create a Virgin Hotel Empire. I have high hopes that he will approach the hotel business with an eye to doing things that guests will love, versus doing things the way they have always been done. The aim of the hotel project is to "redefine the customer journey from pre-arrival to check-out."

When I look at how the Virgin team approached Virgin America, I can begin to imagine how he might transform the hotel experience.

First, it's obvious that Branson loves technology. When you fly Virgin you can IM with your fellow travelers, easily connect to WiFi (often free thanks to partner promotions), watch live TV, play games or easily order movies and premium TV. And, you can order food and drinks from your personal console. No, none of this stuff is revolutionary but it works well and it's what you need when you're sitting on a plane and trying to pass the time.

I expect that Virgin Hotels will lead on technology. I  imagine the hotels will take advantage of new ways to check in to the hotel and order food. And, because they value social interaction, I also expect them to allow guests to meet and socialize with other people staying in the hotel using location based services. Virgin America is very active on social media. The airline has more than 76,000 fans on Facebook and uses Twitter to engage with customers, share specials and follow up on customer service issues.

As simple as it is, one of the best things about flying Virgin is you have access to a power plug beneath your seat. There is a convenience factor to being able to work through a flight. I expect the hotels to provide the same level of convenience by giving you what you need, when you need it. Maybe it's access to printers or cappacinos or umbrellas... or a nail salon in the lobby. I don't know what 'it' is, but I expect a cool convenience to be part of the hotels.

Next, I expect cool design. You know you're on a Virgin plane when you board through the purple halo. While all planes have their own look and feel, Virgin has done something simple with light to remind you during boarding that you're on a Virgin flight. I imagine a strong focus on brand will be part of the hotels and will let you know that you have arrived at a winning brand's locale.

Finally, Virgin America uses irreverent humor and sexy overtones to make the safety announcement bearable. Travel is fun. Too many airlines and hotels have forgotten to make the experience fun. I expect Virgin to bring the fun back to hotels. I can't wait to see the roll out.

Four Crazy Facts About Online Hotel Reviews

Our friends at Tnooz covered an article we wrote yesterday about some fun trends we unearthed while analyzing more than 1.3M reviews. Analyzing online reviews is serious business... but it can also make you chuckle every now and then. Read the whole article below... or see it in its published glory at Tnooz.

In my role at Revinate, I read hundreds of hotel reviews every week and am constantly amazed by both the amount of public feedback available to hotels, and how important this feedback has become to hoteliers. We spend a lot of time performing sophisticated analysis of hotel reviews and social media mentions, looking for trends, interesting tidbits, and ways in which hotels can improve their operations, loyalty and satisfaction based on all this valuable feedback.

 And yes, we also like to have some fun with our analysis. Our team recently analyzed over a million public hotel reviews and found the following conclusions to be seriously interesting.

 Positive Reviews Are Written by Smarter People

Our first conclusion: positive reviews are written by smarter people. To discover that fact we evaluated a set of well over one million reviews against the Coleman-Liau Index, which approximates the minimum grade level required to comprehend a body of text (by looking at the average number of letters per word and the average number of words per sentence).  We were surprised to find that positive reviews have a higher grade level index than negative reviews.

With discoveries like this, it’s tempting to jump to conclusions. Do smarter people receive better service, or rates? Or do they know how to get better rooms? Or do smarter people simply pick better hotels in the first place?

Positive Reviews Get To the Point Faster

Another interesting discovery was that positive reviewers are more concise; they get to the point more quickly. We looked at all positive reviews (4 or 5 stars) and found that positive reviewers used 38% fewer sentences and 45% fewer words in their reviews. In fact, as the star rating increases the average number of sentences and words per review decreases.

So, negative reviews…. can you say, ‘endless rant?’

Women “Wear the Pens” in Relationships

When a couple comes back from vacation, who do you think writes the hotel review? To figure out whether it’s men or women penning reviews after traveling with their spouses, we looked at the occurrences of “my wife and I” vs. “my husband and I” (and variations, even if not grammatically correct). The latter represent 59% of mentions from both sets, so it appears that overall wives are more prolific reviewers than husbands.

Also, wives also appear to have a better handle on grammar. 96.3% of women correctly wrote ‘my husband and I’. 94.5% of men wrote ‘my wife and I’. You don’t want to see the other variations.

Watch out, GM!

Curious as to what really ticks off 1 star reviewers? We are, so we wanted to look at what was mentioned more often in 1 star reviews than in reviews with higher ratings.

We looked at common word and phrases across all reviews, and then compared those common words to the subsets of reviews represented by each star rating (1 to 5). Interestingly, the most common words from 2 to 5 star reviews were not statistically different from words common to the overall review corpus (with a few minor exceptions). However, 1 star reviews produce a lot of words that are statistically distinct when compared to the overall review corpus. In other words, dissatisfied reviews have a lot of unique things to say!

What is the most interesting finding from 1 star reviews? It appears that the phrase ‘the manager’ is 4.2 times more likely to appear in a 1-star review than a 5-star review.  Apparently, when the manager gets involved, bad situations are afoot.

Please tweet @revinate with research suggestions or feedback. We would love to hear from you.

Using Social Media to Differentiate on Service

I recently met with an executive at a leading hotel marketing group. A legend in the industry, he has spent more than 30 years working in hotels. He genuinely loves hospitality and is a stickler for great service. He told me that he is apprehensive about all the new technology coming out because he fears it will make the staff in a hotel obsolete. He said, "I worry about what will happen when people can just check in online and open their door with a bar code that is emailed to them. How will we be able to differentiate on service?"

As much as I love technology, I can see where he is coming from. A few nights ago night I stayed at the Elysian in Chicago and from the moment I pulled in, I was met with smiles and staff that couldn't do enough to make my 12 hours with them special. My name was passed from one staff member to the next so every conversation was personal. Upon checkout, when I expressed concern about making my flight, a front desk manager told me that they would love to have me stay with them another night. I genuinely believed him. And that's when it hit me. Encouraging staff to connect with guests is the most important thing a hotel can do. I will overlook a lot of imperfections if a staff member exceeds my expectations or makes my stay memorable.

And, as I explained to the executive, technology can play a roll. I showed him examples of hotels that were using Facebook and Twitter as an e-conierge and, as a result, surprising and delighting guests. One of my friends recently had a terrible experience with a large luxury brand and as soon as he tweeted about it, he was contacted and told that the situation would be handled immediately. He then tweeted how impressed he was with the brand. He was willing to forgive, and even promote the brand, because of how the situation was handled when he returned home.

What do you think? Can Facebook and Twitter help drive connections between guests and hotels? Will hotels be able to differentiate in this way?

Airplane child-phobia

I don't know about you but the night before I fly I kneel down and pray that I will be kept safe... safely away from any and all children on the plane. I know, I know. I was once a kid and all parents do their best, yadda yadda. Trust me. I love kids as much as the next person but I don't love them next to me, in front of me, or behind me on a plane.

In the waiting area I scan the passengers and make a mental list of the kids I hope are seated no where near me. As we board I make silent deals with the airplane gods. 'If I don't have to sit next to the 6-year old twins with runny noses, I promise to babysit for my niece next weekend. If there are at least 10 rows between me and the newborn I will call my mother when I land, just to chat.'

And now, I read with delight that I'm not alone! According to a Fancompare survey, 80% of survey respondents said they support the idea of creating a "family-only" section on planes. The other 20% don't count because they are clearly the minority. And they are clearly the ones with little kids.

When I was little we used to fly in the smoking section of the airplane so my parents could enjoy a carton of Marlboro Lights to help pass the time. I served my time in the party section. Now it's your turn, kiddos.

USA Today Covers Social Media in the Travel Industry

When USA Today writes an article about social media is in the travel industry, you know it's a prevalent topic.

The article sites many examples of hotels that are using social media to drive loyalty, engagement and sales. Revinate customer, Vero Beach Hotel & Spa, run by Kimpton, is mentioned as a hotel that provides social media discounts on its best available rates. The article explains, "In measuring their redemptions, the hotel learned that the codes generated 270 more room nights this year. 'It's still too early for return-on-investment (analysis). But we've seen some benefits here and there', says Niki Leondakis, president of Kimpton Hotels."

It's a worthwhile read. Check it out here.

Revinate To Present at the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit

Revinate will join an exclusive group of companies to demonstrate travel’s most innovative and impactful new products and technologies live on-stage at The Travel Innovation Summit. An audience of travel executives, investors and media will judge the demonstrations in real time, choosing the innovators that will advance to pitch the industry at Center Stage. The four finalists will each have Five Minutes of Fame to convince a panel of travel luminaries to name them the “PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit Winner.”

See why we think Revinate will win by reading our guest blog post on the PhoCusWright site.

Score another point for the indy hotel

As I have mentioned in past blog posts, one of the interesting side effects of review sites is that independent hotels and smaller brands have a great shot at attracting new guests if they get great reviews. With TripAdvisor's Popularity Index, hotels can get great page placement without spending money on advertising or worrying that they have an unknown brand. Gone are the days when serious travelers only stay at Hiltons or Hyatts because they have trusted brands. Today, it's easy to get unbiased reviews of any hotel by visiting an OTA or a review site like Yelp or TripAdvisor.

On Sunday, I read an article in the New York Times about Stash Hotel Rewards. Stash Hotel Rewards is a loyalty rewards program for independent hotels. Guests who join the program receive 5 points for every dollar they spend with the member hotels and can redeem their points for free stays at member hotels. Today, member hotels come from hotel management companies such as Greystone Hotels, Denihan, Lenox, among others.

Why is a loyalty program for independent hotels so important? If you look at the Market Metrix study from January 2010 called, "Why do guests select a hotel", loyalty program points was ranked 4th at 18% after Guest Experience Factors, Location and Price. If this loyalty program takes off, there is little separating a chain from an indy in terms of benefits.

I joined. Will you?