A simple Q & A

This post was prompted by a new client. They had asked themselves the following question: 

"Is their potential customer more or less likely to use a business that...

• Invites reviews from its customers
• Has them moderated by an independent agency
• Publishes all of those reviews 
• Responds to all those reviews
• Responds to reviews posted anywhere on the web?"

We spend a great deal of time explaining the multitude of benefits that Dialogue brings to our clients, and even more time collating results, and that's only right, but we felt that this short 'checklist' goes right to the core of what HelpHound is for all our clients, no matter what their business.
 

Estate Agents - looking forward to 2014

Building on Proven Success

2013 Has been the year that Dialogue proved its effectiveness for our estate agent clients. More than that, it has been the year that those clients helped us (and each other) understand just how to maximise that effectiveness.

Back at the beginning of 2012, building on our experience with the hospitality industry, we expected that the management of our estate agent clients' online reputations would be a big part of the value we would add; what we did not foresee was the direct effect it would have on driving new business. 2013 has been the year that proved...

• credible reviews drive enquiries through agents websites
• they are an invaluable aid to conversion
• they are an invaluable aid to client retention

On top of this we have gained valuable experience in maximising response from our members' clients, so crucial when volumes of business are far from their peak.

Come aboard!

More than ever before, the facts, results and our clients' opinions of Dialogue speak for themselves. So we will be continuing our policy of ‘no contract’ for the first six months of membership up until 1 Jan 2014 - enabling you to test and prove Dialogue for your agency with the minimum of risk. Join now and see the results blossom in the spring!

Hotels - looking forward to 2014

Building on Proven Success

2013 has been a very big year for us at HelpHound: supported by and in constant conversation our clients we have learned so much more about how many benefits Dialogue can bring.

Here we are going to share this with you all (we’ve linked to the relevant detailed articles)...

• The positive effect on any (and every) given hotels’ online reputation is proven
• The direct link between improvement in online reputation (rankings on TripAdvisor, scores on Booking.com and the other OTAs, and, increasingly important, Google and increased revenue is proven
• The effect of Feedback Manager Plus - responding to reviews on our clients' behalf - is proven
• The success of combining Dialogue with back-end systems like ReviewPro and Revinate to refine guest feedback and aid guest retention is proven

On top of this, the experience we have gained in managing the process for our hotel clients has proved invaluable: how to maximize the harvest of guest emails and dovetailing our systems with the hotels’ PMS – crucial to the effective operation of Dialogue – is making the whole process easier and much more effective for our clients.

To summarise

There are no longer any lingering doubts about the effectiveness of Dialogue and its ability to drive revenue for hotels. We are able to positively guarantee that Dialogue will produce results, no matter where your hotel is currently ranked 

• If you're number 1 - Dialogue will considerably enhance you chances of remaining there
• If you're anywhere but number 1 - Dialogue will improve your ranking
• Dialogue will ensure that you can maintain and increase RevPAR
• Dialogue will positively impact on your guest retention rates

Come aboard!

HelpHound at the Negotiator - the Risks and Rewards of Reviews

A very full day on Tuesday, with Karen and Gabriella on our stand meeting clients and prospective clients and our CEO Robin Bruce speaking about 'the Risks and Rewards of Reviews'...

Daniella and Karen await the surge!

Here's a brief synopsis of Robin's presentation:

• Like it or not (and you should like it) your potential clients are looking for reviews
• So you should be serving them on your website
• Testimonials are so 2010 - they lack credibility
• You must have a strategy for managing negative comment
• Reviews must be verified and credible
• Don't link to external sites - return rates are very low
• Whatever system you adopt it must be moderated - so you can manage negatives

Visitors to our stand and the questions at the end of Robin's presentation showed a far greater awareness of the power of consumer comment to drive business - both towards and away from their businesses - than at last year's Conference.

If you would like more detail on any of the above please contact Karen - on karen.hutchings@helphound.com or 020 7100-2233

Hotel websites are B-O-R-I-N-G!

Not our words, but straight from the BHA's blog: Hotel Websites are Boring! We recommend you read the whole piece. Here are just two extracts...

"...boring your guests and sending them off to review sites where they feel like they get real, straightforward information...”
 

And...

"Don’t make them go to TripAdvisor..."

Our clients and other regular readers of this blog will have heard this before, but it's good when an industry leader like the BHA confirms our thinking.

Dialogue: showing your guests one of the things they want the most: verified credible reviews, where they will do you the most good: on your own website

Rankings up = Revenue up - confirmed in a major Cornell report

At the end of last year Cornell (ranked one of the top 20 universities in the world) University Center of Hospitality Research conducted an in depth study of the 'Impact of Social Media on Lodging Performance'. This report is now available online direct from Cornell and we commend it to all our clients.

Here we will extract the key findings; if you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to contact your Karen or one of her team.

The core finding:

"The analysis finds the following. First, the percentage of consumers consulting reviews at TripAdvisor prior to booking a hotel room has steadily increased over time, as has the number of reviews they are reading prior to making their hotel choice. Second, transactional data from Travelocity illustrate that if a hotel increases its review scores by 1 point on a 5-point scale (e.g., from 3.3 to 4.3), the hotel can increase its price by 11.2 percent and still maintain the same occupancy or market share."

And...
  
"Third, to measure the impact of user reviews on hotel pricing power, consumer demand, and revenue performance the study uses matched-sample data from ReviewPRO and STR. By matching ReviewPRO’s Global Review IndexTM with STR’s hotel sales and revenue data, a regression analysis finds that a 1-percent increase in a hotel’s online reputation score leads up to a 0.89-percent increase in price as measured by the hotel’s average daily rate (ADR). Similarly this

1-percent increase in reputation also leads to an occupancy increase of up to 0.54 percent. Finally, this 1-percent reputation improvement leads up to a 1.42-percent increase in revenue per available room (RevPAR)." 

Other key findings...

User Generated Content During Consumers’ Hotel Search

TripAdvisor is by far the dominant source for online reviews in the hospitality space, with more than 75 million reviews generated by some 32 million users.4 In terms of the hotel choice process, as reported by Market Metrix,5 the tipping point came in 2010, as shown in Exhibit 1. At this point, the guest experience mentioned in customer re- views became the dominant factor in hotel selection, with 51 percent of survey respondents indicating they factored guest experience factors into their hotel selection decision"

  
"The close proximity (to the purchase) of consumer visitation to TripAdvisor perhaps indicates that user reviews are some of the final and potentially pivotal criteria in the hotel selection process."

  
"More generally, OTA reviews, their quality and numbers, lead to increased conversion rates and improved pricing power 

"Better reviews lead to higher prices, while lower reviews force prices lower at the OTA." 

"Hotel operators have suspected that the effect of social media and user generated content on hotel performance has been strengthening. This paper provides a numerical confirmation and estimate of those effects. Reviews and review sites continue to be in the forefront when consumers are planning a hotel room purchase." 

"...a 1-point increase in user review score (on an OTA’s 5-point scale) would allow a property

to increase price by 11.2 percent and maintain the same purchase probability or market share."

 

In Summary:

• Rankings and scores are critical to increasing profitability
• Negative reviews must be minimised
• Positive reviews must be maximised
• Pure volume of reviews is critical; more (positive) reviews = higher profitability 
• The OTAs' capacity to influence GoPPAR continues to increase

For our clients:

• You're doing everything right! But the more email addresses you can harvest, the more successful (and profitable) you will be

 

London's No 1 Hotel joins HelpHound

Welcome to the Zetter, voted London's No 1 Hotel by the Good Hotel Guide.

To see Dynamic Display working away on their home page go here