VIDEO: Leveraging negative reviews to boost hotel brand on Trip Advisor

The hotel got to work, analysing the negative reviews they received on the travel site.

“Over and over, the reviews emphasised how much travellers loved our location, but that the property was really tired,” said Jon Cummins, co-owner and COO of Amerimar Enterprises in a video case study. “That was a green-light for us, we can fix that!”

Throughout the hotel’s refurbishment, guest reviews on TripAdvisor were not only taken into account they were given the highest priority. In three months, the hotel managed to boost its rank from about 480 to 18.

This, is precisely how hotels should go about handling negative reviews, said Trip Advisor’s commercial director APAC, Lewis Ng in an interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific. “Hotels shouldn’t take it personally, but instead, take it as a learning experience and try to make the stay better for the customer,” said Ng.

But good reviews shouldn’t be ignored.  “The hotel should thank that reviewer and strive to maintain that high standard,” said Ng.

While TripAdvisor couldn’t point to research correlating a hotel’s ranking on the site and its business performance, Ng was confident that hotels that ranked well did well.

Trip Advisor holds the title of being the world’s largest travel site. It reports 69 million monthly visitors across 20 travel  brands and operates in 30 countries, including China. To ‘Help travelers plan the perfect trip’, the site draws on a database of 60 million customer reviews. 

According to TripAdvisor, these reviews carry considerable weight. A recent PhoCusWrite study commissioned by TripAdivsor found that 98 per cent of respondents deemed reviews found on the site to be an accurate representation of their actual experience, with nearly 70 per cent finding the reviews to be highly or extremely accurate. Over nine in 10 respondents use TripAdvisor to help them choose the hotels they will stay in.

While some of the reviews on the website have been called into question in the past, Ng said that the company had taken “extreme measures” to ensure the veracity of reviews via the use of algorithms in their computer system.  “Our customers are our best gatekeepers though, if the reviews don’t match their experience they will tell us,” he added.

Emphasising the site’s locality, Ng used Hong Kong as an example. “Over 80 per cent of the hotels in Hong Kong have been reviewed by travelers, 58 per cent have been reviewed in the past 90 days,” he said.

“Whether hoteliers are aware of it or not, travellers are talking about Hong Kong hotels,” said Ng.

While hotels are strongly discouraged from attempting to influence reviews, TripAdvisor does provide a range of tools hotels can use to help promote their profiles on the site. Via the management centre, hotels can track and respond to reviews, and add photos and videos. The site also hosts advertising and provides a collection of widgets that hotels can display on their sites to encourage guests to review their services.  TripAdvisor also hosts masterclasses around the world to help familiarise businesses with the site’s offerings.

Going forward, TripAdvisor’s two major avenues of growth are via mobile and social networks. The company currently has a slew of travel apps including ‘City Guides’ is the second most downloaded in the world with over 16 million downloads. The app’s main feature is the ability to view maps, nearby locations and even street views without a data connection.

The latest app, Local Picks, is a location-based application that showcases restaurant reviews near to the user’s location. The app, newly launched in the US, is not yet available in Asia-Pacific.

TripAdvisor’s tie up with Facebook has also been a useful tool for the site. Users can log in using their Facebook account, which allows friends-of-friends connections, building on greater trust users place on reviews by ‘real people’ they know.

The site’s value, however, continues to lie in its status as a reliable and independent resource for travellers. “Hotels should leave TripAdvisor alone and shouldn’t attempt to tamper with reviews because it wouldn’t be fair to the hotel or service providers along with the travelers for their overall experience,” concluded Ng.