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by Joan King
Guest satisfaction has always been at the heart of the hospitality industry and it used to be that when service recovery did not meet with a guest’s satisfaction all you had to worry about was that person’s word-of-mouth. With enough marketing dollars and brand image advertising to dominate perceptions of the traveling public you could pretty much be assured that booking and occupancy levels would not be impacted by a few disgruntled guests. You can throw that theory out now.
A significant trend for the industry is the impact that guest perceptions and feedback are having at the reservation point-of-booking. A recent article in HSMAI’s Marketing Review quotes a Forrester Research report as saying, “Web travelers find and communicate directly with one another outside of a company’s carefully managed, scripted, and imaged marketing campaign. And in this online show-and-tell, their raw, unvarnished and completely subjective comments rule the roost.” Furthermore, the article provides these observations:
- TripAdvisor claims 18 million visitors a month and has more than 2.6 million reviews on file.
- IgoUgo’s president is quoted as saying that six in ten consumers receive their travel information from other travelers and this influences in the neighborhood of $41 billion of the money they spend on travel.
- Flyertalk.com’s Randy Peterson states, “Online communities are the leading edge in influencing buying power.”
As the article points out, this has brought about “social marketing” that is focused on how to influence the connected customers. Marketing dollars are now being redirected to create new programs in reaction to this reality. But the industry should not overlook the value of evolving existing guest feedback, coupled with rapid response systems, as strategic tools in this new era. Technological advances in our feedback systems have greatly increased the quality, timeliness and outcomes of responses to guest concerns.
In response to this trend consider these points:
- Fast response to guest concerns as a normal course of doing business has a lot of power in diffusing feelings of not being heard or valued, which is at the heart of so many of the online rants. Does your system have a “beat them to the punch” capability that can collect feedback and respond before they stew on the issue and write that negative review?
- The quality of the response can greatly impact resulting feelings and mitigate the guest’s desire to spread their bad experience to the world. Weigh the value of comps and other gestures versus the impact of an online review causing the loss of multiple bookings. Remember, online reviewers also report when they experience positive management efforts to resolving their issues.
Technology will be at the heart of managing guest feedback and its impact from now on. What used to be just between you and the guest now has the potential to be out there for all to know.
This is a quote from an actual guest response captured in the UniFocus GUESTScope™ database of online surveys that are initiated by e-mail the night a guest checks out:
“Be thankful I do not have time to post a review in hotels.com.”
Joan King is currently a National Sales Director for UniFocus. Additionally she has held positions in the Loyalty Management Services division in account management, directing the startup of services for new accounts. Joan has over 18-years of hospitality industry experience having held leadership positions in operations, catering/convention services and sales. She came to UniFocus after more than 8 years with Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts. Joan holds a B.S. in Business Management from Widener University in Chester, PA, as well as C.E. course certificates in F & B Management at the Cornell University School of Hotel Management. Joan can be reached at 972-512-5169 or jking@unifocus.com.
Reprinted from FocusEd, 2006 edition.
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