The Revinate Blog

Social Media Contingency Plans

In the early days of social media, many brands were fearful about customers having the ability to share their brand experiences across the Web. For the first time, brands were faced with not being able to control the public message around their products and services. As time went on, brands became more comfortable as they saw that the majority of experiences being shared online are positive and even when negative experiences arise, watchful brands have the opportunity to publicly show they’re listening and taking care of their customers. But what if the worst-case scenario becomes reality and there’s an outpouring of negative sentiment?

Just last week, McDonald’s was hit with a PR nightmare when a social media campaign they ran turned ugly. The company introduced a new hashtag and promoted tweets using it. The initial tweet read: “When you make something w/ pride, people can taste it.” McD potato supplier #McDstories All of a sudden, people began sharing their McDonald’s horror stories, ranging from foreign objects in the food to health problems that resulted from eating the food. But, the McDonald’s social media team had a contingency plan and less than two hours after the start of the campaign, they stopped promoting the tweets.

McDonald's social media director Rick Wion made a statement about the situation, saying, “Last Thursday, we planned to use two different hashtags during a promoted trend – #meetthefarmers and #mcdstories. While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours.” While the tweets are still easily viewed by searching for the hashtag on Twitter, Rick did everything he could do. As everyone in social media knows, once something is out on the web, there’s vitually no way to remove it completely. All you can do is hope that new, positive messages push bad content down.

So what is the lesson here? First and foremost, you must stay on top of what is being said about your brand. When new customers first get access to the Revinate dashboard, many of them are floored by the amount of content that is out there about their hotels or restaurants. A comprehensive listening platform is key, as it is virtually impossible to manually find all the mentions of your brand without one.

Second, hoteliers do have the power to remove some negative comments if they appear on review sites and are clearly fake or violate the site’s rules. TripAdvisor, for example, allows hoteliers to petition the site to have fake or accidental reviews removed. For example, if you don’t have a pool and a review talks about an experience at the hotel pool, that review would likely be removed. But, if that fails or if the review is legitimate, but negative, many sites allow management responses. Management responses are critical because they allow the business to tell its side of the story and apologize for not meeting guest expectations. As research has shown, a management response can virtually wipe out the negative sentiment from a bad review.

Finally, hoteliers must think through all campaigns and ensure they have a plan in place for difference scenarios, especially if you’re asking for customers to share content. For example, what will you do if you ask guests to post their best trip photos to your Facebook page, and they post photos of your renovation or stained carpets? Will you remove the photos? Comment on them? Allow them to remain? Most importantly, the social media manager should have executive buy-in to ensure that he/she isn’t held liable if and when negative comments roll in. Brands should have a document that outlines the response they will take across different scenarios, along with the anticipated response time. This document should be approved by the heads of all department, as well as the GM, to ensure the whole team is on the same page.

Here is an example to help get you thinking:

Customer Action	Response Time	Responsible	Action
Negative Tweet	15 minutes	Social Media Manager	Tweet: Please DM me so I can reach out personally to help you resolve your issue
Negative Facebook Post	1 hour	Social Media Manager	Comment asking poster to email you so you can resolve issue
Negative review	1 day	DOSM	Investigate / Public response when allowed and reach out privately if you know reviewer's contact info.
YouTube video showing ugly side of hotel	30 minutes	DOSM	Email account owner requesting a call to apologize and discuss his experiences

2011 - How Did We Do?

As we come to the end of 2011, I wanted to share some stats related to our clients' performance. The Revinate database contains paying customers as well as their comp set hotels so we can easily track the performance of both customers and non-customers. Across every metric we examined, our customers are out-performing non-customers. See what happens when you take the time to manage your online reputation? Here are some reasons to be proud to call yourself a Revinator:

* Revinate customers are far more likely to publicly respond to a TripAdvisor review than non-customers. Close to 73% of Revinate customers responded to a review in the second half of 2011. Only 44% of non-customers publicly responded to a review in the same time period.

* The average TripAdvisor rating of a Revinate customer for the second half of the year was 4.16 (out of 5). The average rating of non-customers was 4.018. A narrow victory!

* Revinate clients are quicker to respond to reviews than non-clients, shaving more than day off the average response time.

Want something to aspire to? Holiday Inn St Louis Forrest Hill responded to 100% of their reviews. And their response was published 2.938 days after the initial review was posted. With time for TripAdvisor to moderate, that's speedy! Oh, and their average rating happens to be 4.562!

And finally, since our clients often ask whether they should be responding to positive reviews as well as negative ones, I wanted to share what your colleagues do. Your colleagues responded to 28% of 4 and 5 star reviews. 32% of 3 star reviews and 46.52% of 1 and 2 star reviews.

 

 

 

TripAdvisor Adds Verification Step for Businesses

Last week TripAdvisor announced that all business representatives on TripAdvisor will need to complete a new identity and business affiliation verification process in order to utilize the Management center services. With this verification step, TripAdvisor is hoping to prevent fraud and protect the site’s integrity. 

TripAdvisor has created a how-to guide to help businesses understand the process but simply stated, hotel representatives either need to verify their identity with a credit card or through documentation that clearly links you to your hotel.

We urge all Revinate clients to complete the verification immediately to ensure that you can respond to reviews without any delays.

Hotels that need help with the process can e-mail verify@tripadvisor.com or call 1-617-431-5424.

The Changing Face of Revenue Management

I was recently asked to speak on a panel about the future of distribution. Just a couple of years ago it would’ve been crazy to find a marketing VP from an online reputation management company on that panel but times have changed.  Today, many traditional aspects of marketing have moved to revenue managers who are tasked with determining the right channel and price to sell inventory. But there are other trends that are changing the face of revenue management.

Online reviews and social media are becoming increasingly important to selling rooms. Revenue Managers have long looked to STR data for quantitative metrics to help determine pricing but today they’re beginning to look at including qualitative metrics in their pricing strategy. They are asking themselves, “Are my customers happy? Are they loyal? Do they tell their friends and networks about the experiences they have at our hotels. What are people saying about our competitors.” Whereas these metrics used to be hard to quantify, today they are easily measured and readily available in ORM (online reputation management) services such as Revinate.

Today, consumers are spending more and more of their time on social sites such as Facebook and TripAdvisor. A large part of what they’re doing on these networks is sharing user-generated content in the form of reviews, photos, videos and comments. Because the goal of revenue management is to maximize revenue many hoteliers are actively working on their social media strategy knowing that if they can engage and capture guests on their own Facebook page or through Twitter and have them book directly, the acquisition cost is lower than through an OTA. These efforts are validated by a recent Bain & Company report that shows that customers that engage with brands on social media are more loyal and spend up to 40% more than other customers.

Many brands and properties are now including booking engines on Facebook pages. While bookings through Facebook aren’t yet significant, revenue managers are pushing for the applications to provide consumers with the tools they need to check rates when they’re thinking about booking, on their preferred channel. I have no doubt that this channel will become more and more important as consumers become more comfortable booking on social channels and expect to be able to check rates and book regardless of platform.

When it comes to their own Web sites, more and more hotels and brands are bringing reviews and social content to their sites in an effort to keep people from jumping to other channels to validate hotel choices with other consumers, where they might become distracted or choose to book with an OTA. Review widgets, such as Revinate's Social Buzz, are now common companions to booking engines and we expect to see more and more hoteliers use review widgets in 2012. 

And of course OTAs are all now including reviews so people can read what others thought about their hotel experience before confirming the booking. And even more interesting is the trend of social engagement on review sites. Close to 90% of Revinate customers (hoteliers and restaurateurs) are now publicly responding to reviews on TripAdvisor and OTAs. Why is this becoming so prevalent? We know from a recent TripAdvisor/Forrester study that when a hotel publicly responds to reviews, it has the opportunity to reassure a prospect and even win new business.

 Flash Sales and Social Buying sites are also changing the landscape of distribution, though it’s unclear whether they are here to stay – at least in hospitality. Part of the reason why Groupon and Living Social were so successful out of the gates is because of the social, sharing aspect of the deals. Friends were able to quickly share information about deals on Facebook and drive more people to the offer. While there has been a lot of discussion lately about whether this channel helps or hurts the industry, I can tell you from the online review side that we do see hotels suffer when they bring in the wrong customer for their hotels. Similar to opaque channel customers, price sensitive customers that book a great rate on a flash sale might not factor additional costs for parking and internet, for example, into their plans and feel nickel-and-dimed upon check-out. Their reviews often complain about ‘hidden costs’ and the high price of food and drinks.

 Finally, you can’t talk about distribution today without discussing mobile. Armed with smart phones, consumers expect to be able to do anything on their phones that they can do on computers, and more, given location-based services. 2012 is likely to see both a decrease in booking window as well as a rise in ‘just in time’ travel services, such as Hotel Tonight. These mobile services can be great ways to sell extra inventory for tonight, while maintaining rate parity and your good reputation, since your discount isn’t visible for the world to see.

When I think about the goals of revenue management, one thing hits me like a brick. There is so much room for social to play a huge role. If I look at how hotel marketing has largely moved from the hotel marketing team to guests via social networks and online reviews, the same thing is primed to happen with distribution. Top Guest has started to get people thinking about how can you use social media to enable your customers to promote your hotel and others are likely thinking about closing the loop with bookings. Along these lines, savvy revenue managers will begin to figure out how to “outsource” inventory distribution and booking generation to consumers, who now have more ways, and social incentive, to share tips and recommendations with their networks of connections. More is definitely to come.

 

Hoteliers Guide to Finding Your Voice in Management Responses

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.

Download the guide here.

Why TripAdvisor is the Content Leader

I write reviews. Why? In addition to being one of the few people I know who loves to write, I am thankful that there is a platform for sharing thoughts and opinions with thousands of people.  It's a very democratic concept and I take full advantage of it. But recently I have noticed that TripAdvisor is doing more and more to appeal to my ego to encourage me to write more reviews. The company's ability to drive reviews is undoubtedly what has made the company the market leader in terms of content, with more than 50 million reviews and opinions.

First, as soon as 100 people have ready my newly posted review, I get an email letting me know about the milestone.

Then, I get periodic updates about how many people have read my library of reviews. The last email I received (shown on the top left) blew me away. More than 6000 people read a review I wrote about La Casa Que Canta in Mexico. My voice is being heard, and not just in the United States. At the bottom of the email I got to see the demographics of my readers.

Finally, TripAdvisor does a great job of encouraging me to write reviews by displaying badges that appeal to my ego. I am currently a senior reviewer but if I write 3 more reviews I will be a contributor. Badges, used in many online businesses that require consumer action, have become a great virtual reward to incentivize consumers.

And when the hotel responds to my reviews and thanks me for taking the time to share my thoughts, I always feel good. As a consumer I feel like the system is working, from the review site platform to the hotel, to the community.

 

 

Why Hoteliers Still Have Control in the Age of Reviews and Social Media

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.

Great new data about reviews and their importance

HotelNewsNow just published a great article with some exciting new stats from PhoCusWright about the importance of online reviews on OTA's. For example:

• According to a PhoCusWright study of 27,000 U.S. hotels comprising 65 major brands, two out of every three online traveler reviews were posted to an OTA. The remaining third, or 34%, were posted to a travel review site like TripAdvisor. (Of the reviews that Revinate monitors, we see 27.5% on TripAdvisor. See our distribution here.)
  
• Roughly 7% of unique visitors to any major OTA complete a booking within the same month. Of those who click through to read a full review, that percentage bumps up to 13%.
• Facebook, foursquare and Twitter helped the number of U.S. online travel reviews grow from roughly 880,000 in 2008 to nearly 1.1 million in 2010, according to PhoCusWright.
• Anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 U.S consumers went to book a hotel room immediately after visiting a social review site like TripAdvisor from 2008 to 2010. Facebook dwarfed that count, sending upwards to half a million referrals during 2009 and 2010.

So what does this mean for hoteliers? For one thing, remember that you should be monitoring your reviews across the entire Web, not just on TripAdvisor. Revinate clients can use the reviews overview report to see which reviews sites and OTAs have a lot of reviews for your property, and which ones don't. Don't forget to see where your competitors are getting their reviews from and if you don't have fresh content on those OTAs, it's time to start encouraging your guests to write reviews.

With Facebook driving so many referrals, make sure you get your guests talking when they're on site. On a recent trip to Texas I was the recipient of a great amenity and I immediately turned to my social networks to share the news.   The post I shared with my friends is on the left. While proving an amenity to each and every guest isn't realistic, watch your Twitter activity to see who is tweeting while on site. These people are prime targets for surprise and delight since they're active sharers and will likely tell their networks about any extraordinary experiences on site.

Read the whole HotelNewsNow article here.

Management Response Rates

As you know, many online review sites and OTAs now allow managers to respond to reviews. If you follow this blog regularly, or are a Revinate customer, you know that we highly recommend that hotels take advantage of management responses as it's a great way to show customers that you are listening for feedback and that you care about the guest experience. But how many are responding to reviews? In April, TripAdvisor said that 7% of hotels across the world were responding to reviews.

We wanted to know if the hotels we track are doing any better so we looked at the thousands of hotels that we monitor to uncover these stats:

Over the last three months, 42.2% of hotels have responded to a TripAdvisor review.

Over the last three months, 4.3% of hotels have responded to an Expedia review.

Over the last three months, 3% of hotels have responded to a hotel.com review.

Over the last three months, 5.8% of hotels have responded to a Yelp review.

 

3rd Party Reviews Removed from Google Maps and Google Places

Interesting article and comments this morning on Tnooz about Google removing third party hotel reviews from its prominent place on Maps and Places products. Before, when you went to Google Maps or Places, you would be able to see TripAdvisor, Yelp and other 3rd party reviews. Now they're gone. In their place, just reviews written on Google's own platform by people with a Google ID.

Of the changes, the Google Lat Long Blog says, "Rating and review counts reflect only those that’ve been written by fellow Google users, and as part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we’re continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive view of locations across the globe." The 3rd party reviews can be accessed by scrolling down the page, where plain text links allow you to see reviews from around the world on TripAdvisor, TravelPod and Booking.com, in Hotel Rex's case.

I am seeing a little bit of an outcry from hoteliers because, like TripAdvisor, reviews on Google's platform aren't verified at all. All you have to do is click "write a review," share your thoughts, and your review is published immediately.

Otherwise, most people see it as a sign that Google is looking to create a robust platform, driven by user generated content, and helpful because it knows who you are and who your friends are, thanks to the recently released Google+. Looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.