Our hotel clients - and their success with TripAdvisor

At HelpHound we are taking 'best practice' and adding value. So what do we mean by 'best practice'? 

Best Practice

Let's set out what we know is working for the best ranked hotels on TripAdvisor:

1. They run a good hotel (not necessarily a great hotel)
2. They have a very tight focus on review management
3. They actively invite their guests to post reviews

Now let's examine each of these in more detail:

They run a good hotel (not necessarily a great hotel)

Your hotel's not going to rank well in your city or area unless it's delivering guest satisfaction, but if it is and it is not ranking in the top 5% you can be sure that there's plenty of room for improvement.

They have a very tight focus on Review Management

We are constantly asked "What is review management?" and our answer is simple: "If you have to ask you are not doing it."

In its broadest sense it is an awareness throughout the hotel's staff, from doorman to GM, that each and every guest is a potential reviewer. After that it is having recognised procedures in place to ensure that:

• happy guests write reviews
• unhappy guests bring their concern to the hotel and don't write reviews

They actively invite their guests to post reviews

They don't leave it to chance, it is considered part of every guest-facing member of staff's job to identify potential reviewers and encourage them to post. They go much further than simply handing departing guests a leaflet. We know this partly because we know the hotels in question and partly because we can tell from the ratio of rooms to reviews.

Rooms to reviews?

We monitor this statistic very carefully: take the number of reviews you have had in the past month and divide it by the number off rooms in your hotel you will achieve a figure; if it's less than 1 review for every 7 rooms (e.g. If you have 100 rooms and you have less than 14 reviews) you need to address review management (London's top ranked hotel, for instance, achieves a review per month for every 3.8 rooms).

Now - overlay HelpHound's Dialogue:

Take the number of positive reviews you receive and increase that number by 27%.

Take the number of negative reviews you receive and reduce them by 76%...

This is taken from a previous post - see it in full here

The result will always be better with Dialogue, and we guarantee that, but how much better will be determined by how much you and your staff engage with the other aspects of review management.

And please use us: we are professional review managers with over seven years of experience and we pride ourselves that we can add tremendous value for our clients, you only have to ask.

Understanding TripAdvisor - again

It's so important: understanding as much as we all can about how TripAdvisor make up those all-important rankings. So at great personal hardship one of our researchers paid a visit to two establishments in Spain. 

Ranked at number 1 and 2 in their area, here are the raw TA statistics for both hotels:

Hotel 'A'                                                                                       Hotel 'B'

Which, do you suppose, is which? Well here are some more statistics before you decide:

Price per room: Hotel 'A': € 90, Hotel 'B' : € 240. Difference in facilities: both have great staff and a lovely pool, rooms at hotel 'A' are slightly more luxurious, Hotel 'A' has air-conditioning, Hotel 'B' has portable units (which were not needed in temperatures in the 90s). Both offered excellent breakfasts and three-course dinners. Both were in very similar locations.

So which was which? Hotel 'A' is the one with 80 reviews, hotel 'B' is the one with 310 reviews. 

There's just one more similarity: one has 8 rooms, the other 11. 

So what makes Hotel 'B' TripAdvisor's choice for Number 1 in its area? It has to be 'volume of reviews' - for what else could possibly indicate that Hotel A is less worthy of the number one spot (they have NO 3, 2 or 1 star reviews). It's a puzzle to both hoteliers (and to all of us as well).

As ever, we'd be delighted if someone at TripAdvisor would like to post a comment to enlighten us.

Reviews - the Future for Hotels

But before we look into our crystal ball, let's recap on the current state-of-play. Today's reviews market is dominated by 'first entrants': businesses that saw an opportunity to pitch their tents on a vacant lot. Sites like Yelp and Expedia and TripAdvisor. Sites like these can cover everything (Yelp) or anything (TripAdvisor - travel).

Just like the 'Wild West' we alluded to back in June last year - or perhaps more akin to a  gold rush? But, just as these historical events ran their course, so will the web resolve itself out of this anarchic phase. But how? And when?

How? And When?

We've got a much better picture of the 'How?' than the 'When?', but it's the 'How?' that is most important for our clients: and this is very much up to Google. Google is the sherriff, the President, the gatekeeper - all rolled into one. No-one gets access to anything on the web without Google's say-so. 

And when your potential guests* go to Google, it gives them the information it knows they want.

How does Google know what they want? The simple answer is that Google knows what they searched for, not just a millisecond ago, but in the last hour/day/week/year. In most cases it also knows where they live (at a minimum, their home country) and an awful lot about their lifestyle and purchasing habits.

So Google gives them this, right at the top:

And then this:

And then this: 

So?

Given what we know of people's behaviour when they're browsing the web (that 8 times out of 10 they will look at the first relevant result) they will increasingly be drawn to Google's reviews in preference to any others (unless Google draws a blank). So the 'wild west campers' like this:

And this...

 And this...

And this...

...will become much less relevant as time goes by. Whether or not the reviews they contain are positive or negative, because as your potential guests* will  become conditioned to going no farther than Google for reviews, they won't be looking at these sites nearly so much. 

This is actually a huge advantage for most hotels as it means they will only have to focus on getting reviews to Google; of course its also a massive advantage for our clients, as Dialogue is expressly designed to do just that (after, of course, ensuring that the reviews have been processed through Resolution™ and our client has been given the opportunity to respond, in private, to any issues raised).

*And don't ignore Google's impact on your returning guests: increasingly we 'Google' for details of businesses we use, even if it's just for an address or 'phone number, but Google shows us reviews all the same.

Reviews - the Future

But before we look into our crystal ball, let's recap on the current state-of-play. Today's reviews market is dominated by 'first entrants': businesses that saw an opportunity to pitch their tents on a vacant lot. Sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Sites like these can cover everything (Yelp) or anything (TripAdvisor - travel, IWantGreatCare - hospitals and doctors).

Just like the 'Wild West' we alluded to back in June last year - or perhaps more akin to a  gold rush? But, just as these historical events ran their course, so will the web resolve itself out of this anarchic phase. But how? And when?

How? And When?

We've got a much better picture of the 'How?' than the 'When?', but it's the 'How?' that is most important for our clients: and this is very much up to Google. Google is the sherriff, the President, the gatekeeper - all rolled into one. No-one gets access to anything on the web without Google's say-so. 

And when your potential customers* go to Google, it gives them the information it knows they want.

How does Google know what they want? The simple answer is that Google knows what they searched for, not just a millisecond ago, but in the last hour/day/week/year. In most cases it also knows where they live (at a minimum, their home country) and an awful lot about their lifestyle and purchasing habits.

So Google gives them this:

And then this:

And then this: 

So?

Given what we know of people's behaviour when they're browsing the web (that 8 times out of 10 they will look at the first relevant result) they will be drawn to Google's reviews in preference to any others (unless Google draws a blank). So the 'wild west campers' like this:

 

And this...

 And this...

And this...

...become much less relevant as time goes by. Whether or not the reviews they contain are positive or negative, because as your potential customers* become conditioned to going no farther than Google for reviews, they won't be looking at these sites. 

This is actually a huge advantage for most businesses as it means they only have to focus on getting reviews to Google; of course its also a massive advantage for our clients, as Dialogue is expressly designed to do just that (after, of course, ensuring that the reviews have been processed through Resolution™ and our client has been given the opportunity to respond, in private, to any issues raised).

*And don't ignore Google's impact on your existing customers: increasingly we 'Google' for details of businesses we use, even if it's just for an address or 'phone number, but Google shows us reviews all the same.

Credibility - a cornerstone of Dialogue

To us it's a given - so much so that we probably don't mention it as often as we should. In this post we will address the issue of credibility from your customers' perspective. 

This Q & A is written as if one of your customers was asking the questions to you (the business).

Q. What happens when I post a complimentary review?

A. It first goes to HelpHound where their moderators read it, and then it's posted to our website for everyone to see.

Q. What if it's not complimentary? 

A. HelpHound's moderators will send it straight to us so we can try to resolve whatever issue you have raised.

Q. So HelpHound filters out the negatives?

A. No - you always have the right to post whatever review you want, at any time. But we use HelpHound because the overwhelming majority of our customers write this kind of review because they have an issue they want resolved (HelpHound call the process 'Resolution'), and we want to be able to resolve it.

Q. I know some services like this allow you to choose which reviews are shown at the top

A. Yes, but not HelpHound. With Dialogue you choose, it automatically defaults to the most recent ('latest'), but you can choose to view 'worst' first if you wish.

Q. So if I want to voice whatever issue I have with your business in public, I can do that with Dialogue?

A. Yes, but we will have been given a chance to 'resolve' for you it first. If you remain unhappy you always have the right to post publicly (and we can respond publicly).

Q. What role do HelpHound play in all this?

A. They provide a watching brief: they make sure that we respond quickly and fairly. And at the end of the process they invite you to post a final visible review.

Q. Why use HelpHound? Why not just deal efficiently with complaints yourselves?

A. In this internet age we need visitors to our website to be able to reassure themselves that we are good at what we do, credibly. We acknowledge that simply publishing customer opinions that we have gathered ourselves will lead to that credibility being questioned, so we use HelpHound as an independent agency to do it for us. Here's what they say at the top of all our reviews:

But, of course, no business is perfect (just look at our reviews, we're not rated 5 stars by all our customers), but we want an opportunity to correct our mistakes. In that way HelpHound enables us to achieve two objectives: showing, credibly, what our customers think of us, and resolving the (hopefully) small number of mistakes and misunderstandings that occur with even the best businesses.

Q. Assuming that you are paying HelpHound, how can they be considered independent?

A. HelpHound's (and therefore our) reputation rests on the credibility of the service they provide to us and our customers. If any single customer of any client of theirs found that their ability to post whatever they wanted was in any way impeded the whole object of our relationship would be rendered null and void. HelpHound's own credibility rests entirely on their ability to remain independent of us.

Q. Of course, I can always post somewhere else?

A. And we are fully aware of that, that's one of the main reasons we adopted Dialogue: so we could give our customers an effective modern communications tool that they would actively choose to use.

And finally: If you have any lingering doubts, post through Dialogue and experience it in action for yourself, we are sure you will be pleasantly surprised.

What happened when a hotel suspended Dialogue for 2 months?

We guessed that the numbers might be interesting, but not quite this interesting. If we were arrogant we would say we knew what would happen, but human nature being what it is we will stop short of that - until next time, that is.

Positive reviews (4 and 5 star) posted to TripAdvisor:

In the 2 months before suspension: 63

In the 2 months after: 36

Too clear to ignore? You bet. 10% down would have been inconclusive, but a 43% drop and the conclusion is unarguable.

You get 'em there, we'll help you keep 'em there

+ 27%

That's how much one client's click through (to one or more pages after their home page) increased with Dialogue. Prospective customers don't just want reviews, they actively seek them out; and if any more proof of this were needed, here it is.

-19%

How much bounce (visitors to their website leaving after only viewing their home page) reduced; also known as 'visitor retention' - here's a great description we read recently:

With thanks to Randi Thornton