More Support for Truth being Online Gold Dust

A recent survey by the Kelsey Group recently announced that consumers are willing to pay at least 20% more for products and services receiving a 5 star (or excellent) rating versus those receiving a 4 star (or good) rating. The study also indicated that about 24% of the Internet users that were surveyed use online ratings during the research and buying process. More than three quarters reported that the online reviews played a significant role in their decision to use a product or service, with the highest percentage allocated to hotels. So, this is yet another confirmation for those of you... Read more »

Hospitality Managers Pay Attention! The Truth Doesn’t Have to Hurt

A big part of both the Canada-e-connect and the PhoCusWright Conferences revolved around user generated content and the effect that online review sites have on a companies reputation. The TripAdvisor presentation, which I reviewed earlier, pointed out that hoteliers and destination marketers don’t need to fear public opinion and that feedback in the form of reviews is a valuable tool from a customer service standpoint. This survey, by Marketing Vox seems to support the idea that reviews are really not as bad as hoteliers think. Here is a snippet of the results as posted by Joe Buhler: Fully... Read more »

Expert vs. Amateur Reviews

I’ve been following an ongoing discussion on the WIWIH forums about the effect that expert reviews and amateur reviews have on the reputation of a hotel. I find this discussion particularly interesting because it is directly related to the increasing use of user generated content by travelers in the decision making process. Trip Advisor, among others, have been using amateur user ratings for some time as a way of rating properties in an unbiased manner. The challenge they face now is that property owners have realized that they too can produce their own user generated content in order... Read more »