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From left: Daniel Edward Craig, Debbie Milburn and Guillaume Thevenot
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LONDON—TripAdvisor is a game changer for hoteliers.
Even if you don’t like everything about it, TripAdvisor brought about the whole idea of transparency to the guest experience. Founded in 2000, the site hosts 40 million reviews, 6 million user-generated photos and 20 million subscribers, according to Michael Nowlis, director of the Senior Executive Programme at the London Business School and moderator of the TripAdvisor panel on Monday at HSMAI Europe’s Revenue Management and Internet Marketing Strategy Conference at the Hilton London Metropole.
“I don’t think the hotel industry has been quick enough to adapt to this change,” said Daniel Edward Craig, author and reputation management consultant.
Craig said there are several ways hotels can use and interact with TripAdvisor:
• Monitor and listen using tools.
• Discuss and resolve problems.
• Generate positive reviews and feedback.
Many hoteliers take umbrage with negative reviews and proving review fraud.
Guillaume Thevenot, blogger and hotel trade relations manager, EMEA, for TripAdvisor, was brief in his discussion of this issue. He said in many countries it is illegal to post false reviews. The company does not disclose how it detects fraud, but at the same time, “people aren’t dumb” and the fake reviews usually stand out.
Jorunn Svidal, director of revenue management for Norway’s Thon Hotels, said it’s not so much how TripAdvisor helps generate revenue as much as negative reviews cause a loss in revenue.
Indeed, “a hotel’s response to a complaint can have more impact than the complaint itself,” Craig said. Only 7% of negative TripAdvisor reviews receive a response, he added.
These negative reviews become particularly important in the United Kingdom, as government officials recently came out in support of customer generated feedback over the traditional star rating program. “It’s not a good idea to lose the classification system in the U.K.,” said Debbie Milburn, director of marketing services for QHotels. “But we’re aware that a big animal such as Google is using consumer-generated content.”
Thevenot said the future of hotel star ratings is his favorite topic.
“As a traveler, I believe the star rating is going to die. I don’t think it values the service in a hotel. … Yes, there is some segmentation of hotels, that’s not going to die. But one 5-star hotel from Marrakech to Paris to London? There’s no way you can have international standardization.”
TripAdvisor insights
Audience questions allowed Thevenot to share some trends and information about the direction of TripAdvisor.
• Europe is the main driver of traffic to TripAdvisor.
• Mobile applications for the company focus on “things to do,” but Thevenot suggested hotels look at the opportunity to sell ancillary services here.
• TripAdvisor “needs to get better” at providing a hotel’s average price. The site currently uses information from online travel agency partners not limited to Expedia. However, Thevenot reminded the group that users don’t book on TripAdvisor.
• The best reviews always involve people: “It doesn’t matter if the total experience wasn’t 100% positive. This is what they like to share, their experience with people.”
• TripAdvisor doesn’t organize reviews by type of hotel guest except for business travelers, although it has the information to sort that way. Thevenot said the Facebook integration is an interesting concept, because you can look at your friends’ reviews.
• For hotels that receive a high volume of reviews, such as The Bellagio in Las Vegas, TripAdvisor is looking at a “snapshot view” to aggregate the feedback.
• “Analyzing what people are sharing could be Web 3.0 sites,” Thevenot said. One audience member offered to pay for that information: “If you provide that business intelligence from reviews, we could use that in the hotel industry to improve things.”
Craig said there are tools out there for hoteliers to aggregate a single hotel’s reviews and drill down key issues. In Europe, he surveyed TrustYou Analytics and ReviewPro.
