How to Manage Your Hotel’s Online Reputation

Every hotelier today is aware of the fact that they can boost profitability with improved guest satisfaction levels and productivity.

Consumer reviews are significantly more trusted – nearly 12 times more -than descriptions that come from manufacturers. (eMarketer, February 2010)

This is where next-generation guest intelligence and analytics steps in. It can empower properties to leverage efficient internal operations as well as simplified ORM or online reputation management strategies for hotels.

ORM for hotels is basically done by building intelligent semantic algorithms which go through guest reviews minutely to analyze customer sentiment. So the powerful algorithm can actually break this data down into quantifiable points and metrics that can be further leveraged to come up with a unique scoring mechanism for a hotel.

Guest reviews form the base to calculate certain strategies on the basis of logic and factors: These include:

• Reviewer age

• Frequency

• Source variance

• Guest preference

With this data, hoteliers can identify core strengths as well as market them better to all the consumers, to draw more positive words on social forums and metasearch sites.

83% of all holiday shoppers are influenced by customer reviews. (Channel Advisor “Consumer Shopping Habits Survey”, August 2010)

This is also the best way to address weaknesses immediately, in a subtle manner without much ado. A good understanding of such consumer preferences can align guest services in agreement with a hotel’s ultimate revenue goal. This exercise can push incremental revenue for a hotel revenue manager further ahead.

Things that are published online stay forever!

More than one third of consumers will not book a hotel room without reading reviews first. (Late Rooms, November 2012)

As per reputation management gurus, this might not be true all the time. Hotels face several other challenges in their business. In order to overcome the same, there are just top two or three things which the staff and departments can do proactively to safeguard brand reputation. One of them is data monitoring in all social media mentions (like Google posts, meta search posts, online review site listings, FB posts, Tweets etc.) These are the places where online reputation of a hotel begins to come together.

So when it comes to online reviews, potential damage can be caused when cybersecurity gets threatened. Especially, in case of data breach, huge reputational problems arise. In order to curb this, hotels need to stay prepared as far as interacting with communication departments is concerned, as these areas are a huge concern. Then, correct engagement mechanisms can be put in place to resolve ORM loopholes:

• You should gather reviews from hundreds of sources globally that span through videos, blogs and travelogues in all languages
• You should have a single screen or dashboard to view and respond to all online reviews
• You should share reviews externally (across online channels) and internally (among departments)
• You need to collect guest feedback while the guest is at the hotel or post check-out
• You have to leverage customized guest intelligence applications
• You have to determine the efficacy of internal operations with a score
• You must track competitor data department-wise

In case these online wounds still fester, you need an automated hotel online reputation management system.

Hotel managers must be concerned about scores of other things because hotel reputation management is the only feasible solution.

“Online reputation management is becoming hugely important to Hotels because reviews have a direct correlation with demand, the holy grail of revenue management.” (Corin Burr, director of Bamboo Revenue, London)

Guest reviews and revenue performance are interlinked. When a proper ORM strategy is in place, hotel owners can watch their revenue bottomline upsurge in leaps and bounds. So its high time that hoteliers realized a lot is in stake at the hands of online reputation of their property.

Constant work such as PR-campaigns, social media activity and content creation are some of the few important ways to present to the world. However, it is one thing to engage actively in order to promote hotel online reputation once in a while and another to keep constantly monitoring recent developments and staying interactive with the guests. That might be easier said than done. As a Hotel Manager, one is regularly very busy with handling daily business.

Remember, there is never enough time to manage online reviews to expand the Hotel Reputation Management. However, less emphasis in this field causes hotels to miss out on an opportunity to activate huge revenue channels. Besides, potential guests always do online research before booking a hotel. So it is advisable to hire professional hotel ORM solution provider who can monitor and improve your reputation in the digital arena instantly.

Source by Sudhir Kumar