News for the Hospitality Executive |
A Round-up
of Social Media and
Reputation Monitoring Tools for Hotels
By
Daniel Edward
Craig
February 1, 2011 This
is an excerpt from the new e-guide, The Hotelier’s Guide to Online
Reputation Management, available for download at www.danieledwardcraig.com. To stay on top of this seismic shift, hotels must reallocate even more resources from traditional “push” media to owned and earned media, and specifically to activities that engage travelers, drive advocacy, and manage reputation through social media channels and review sites. And it’s not enough to simply “join the conversation”—you need to track feedback, ROI, and conversions. The good news
is, there are a
number of time-saving tools to facilitate these activities. At a
minimum,
subscribe to alerts from Google
or Yahoo to monitor
online
chatter. They won’t catch everything, but they’re the right price
(free), easy
to set up, and customizable to keywords important to your property. For
social
media mentions, try SocialMention
and TweetBeep. To gain insight
into visitor
traffic, behavior, and ROI on your social media channels, use free
analytic
tools provided by Facebook
Insights, YouTube
Insight
and Google Analytics.
An
essential resource for any property is TripAdvisor’s Owners Center, where you
can set
up alerts, respond to reviews, and take advantage of free basic
analysis and
reporting from Market Metrix. But if you’re
serious about
managing your reputation, you’ll need to dig deeper. Fortunately, a
number of
bright minds in technology and hospitality have developed some great
tools to
aggregate, organize, and analyze reviews and social media feedback from
across
the web. Whether your
property is
independent or part of a group, a social media monitoring tool will
help you
turn guest feedback into a competitive advantage. It will help you
identify
areas of strength and weakness by department and service category,
engage
advocates and detractors, and benchmark performance over time against
competitors and affiliated properties. To what extent
you use this data
will be up to each property, but you’ll achieve the best results by
taking a
similar approach to revenue management: integrating reputation
management into
your daily operations, culture, and best practices. Most of these
tools offer similar
features, with a few key differences. To help you find the right tool,
I
surveyed the key players that specialize in the hotel industry. Based in San Francisco, Revinate launched in March 2010 and has experienced rapid growth since. I’ve worked with them and find them to be highly service-oriented and responsive—essential qualities for developers of a fairly complex and multi-faceted tool. The
Revinate dashboard is easy to use, intuitive, and available in
real-time
from any web browser. Features include a “social
media scorecard” that measures key metrics and charts performance,
custom
alerts with suggested actions for
follow-up, and
response functionality integrated with review sites. TweetConcierge
facilitates
the management of Twitter profiles and tracks ROI on campaigns.
Says Michelle
Wohl, VP of
marketing and client services, “Revinate allows hotels to monitor
performance
against previous trends or their competition, identify competitive
advantages
and disadvantages to improve marketing and operations, and even grab
new
customers who are unsatisfied with other hotels. Revinate also has the
tools,
visibility, and controls that portfolio managers need to effectively
operationalize
online reputation management.” At the
InterContinental
Montelucia Resort and Spa, the sales team uses the Revinate dashboard
to show
clients an objective measure of guest satisfaction, and operations uses
it as
part of staff training. (See case study). Revinate has
customers around the
world but is particularly strong in North America, and recently became
an authorized
TripAdvisor partner. Pricing varies according to property size and room
rates;
the monthly fee is the approximate equivalent of one booking, with
volume
discounts for groups. Clients include Kimpton, Peninsula Hotels, and
Joie de
Vivre. For industry news, resources, and tips, check out the Revinate blog. Based in Barcelona, ReviewPro offers a standard, advanced, and basic free version. Hotel performance is assessed on both quantitative analysis, measured by a general online reputation score called the Global Review Index™ (GRI), and sentiment analysis, which gauges sentiment in guest comments based on sixty key attributes and hundreds of related concepts. When the Olivia
Plaza Hotel in Barcelona noticed a pattern
of complaints about street noise, they asked ReviewPro to add noise as
a semantic
attribute. “We can now look at which clients are affected by noise and
how many
comments about noise we receive," said revenue manager Ricardo Samaan. (See
case study). Initially
targeted on the European market, ReviewPro has branched out to 25
countries,
including the US. The company collects data from thousands of sources,
including 55 OTAs, and analyzes reviews in eight languages.
Sentiment
analysis is provided in English and Spanish, and a German version is
being
tested. The base price for the advanced version is US $199 per hotel
per month,
with discounts for volume and pre-payment. The free version offers
basic
functionalities. Clients include Sol Meliá, Eurostars,
and Room Mate Hotels. For case studies and industry news, check
out the ReviewPro
Blog. Headquartered in Munich, TrustYou started out as a meta review search engine for travelers and has since launched multiple APIs and a monitoring tool for hotels. The Widget API
is used by brands
like Best Western and InterContinental to integrate review scores and
brand
reputation in real time on their website in order to increase
conversions and
user trust. The Semantic API is used by brands like Holidaycheck (“the
European
TripAdvisor”) to analyze and categorize millions of reviews for better
usability, filtering, and search. Like ReviewPro,
TrustYou
Analytics provides a seal hotels can post to their website that gives
an
overall score from reviews culled from a variety of sites and indicates
how
many were positive, negative, and neutral. TrustYou provides sentiment
analysis
to interpret guest feedback in eight languages in a range of
categories. The
“Tops and Flops” report allows hotels and brands to identify strengths
and
weaknesses over time, and the Buzz section allows users to manage
social media
channels all on one page. Pricing starts
at €1490 for an
annual subscription, and a 14-day free trial version is available.
Clients
include Swissôtel, Marriott, and IHG. A client-only section of
the website
provides case studies, resources, and best practices. Launched in July 2009, eBuzz Connect is from MileStone, a full-service internet marketing company based in Santa Clara, CA founded in 1998. President and founder Benu Aggarwal’s background as a former hotelier is evident in the scope and depth of the product’s offerings. The eBuzz Connect dashboard provides strong collaboration and accountability features, facilitating communication among departments, enabling tracking of review responses and actions taken, and measuring user engagement. Hotels can compare rate positioning to guest satisfaction ratings against competitors and track lead generation on social media channels. There is also an “Impact Index” to help hotels identify and prioritize significant issues. Most clients
are in the US, but
the company is expanding to the UK, Asia, and South America and tracks
reviews
in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and other languages. Standard
pricing
for eBuzz Connect starts at $100 per month, with discounts for hotel
groups. Chatter Guard is from Lodging Interactive, a full-service interactive marketing agency based in Parsippany, NJ. The company is a pioneer of social media monitoring, having launched its service in 2004. Chatter Guard’s
package includes
the manual reading and scoring of service attributes such as
housekeeping,
dining, personnel, rooms, and value to give hotels a measure for
each
review and an aggregate score for each service. “This keeps the rating
system
consistent across all sources,” says Richard Walsh, VP of business
development.
An email notification is sent to the hotel after analysis and scoring,
within a
few days of posting. Also included
is a professional
response service for Expedia, Yelp, and TripAdvisor reviews. A Chatter
Guard
representative drafts the response, forwards it to the property for
review, and
then posts it under an agreed-upon title like “Guest Relations
Manager”. All
reviews, including positive, receive a response. The tool does not
track
competitor activity, which Walsh says is not of interest to most
clients. Pricing ranges from $325 to $725 per month based on total room count, plus a $350 setup fee. A low-priced option, Chatter Guard Lite, was recently discontinued. Clients include the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA, Maison Dupuy, and Turtle Bay Resort in Hawaii. ReviewMetrix Based in San Francisco, CA, ReviewMetrix is a Market Metrix product that provides reporting and analysis for TripAdvisor reviews only. The company offers a single-property version and a multi-property version called Enterprise. Performance
is measured according to the proprietary
Customer Satisfaction Index™ (CSI), which rates TripAdvisor reviews
from zero
to 100 based on seven key categories, including guest comments. This
makes it easy
to compare performance with other properties and to set benchmarks.
Hotels can
select a benchmark set from a database of more than 450,000 hotels
worldwide. “The challenge
with social media
feedback is that it's inherently messy,” say Jonathan
Barsky, VP Research and Robert Honeycutt, CEO. “It’s public,
unsolicited
and unpredictable.” They call for a comprehensive feedback strategy
that
incorporates reviews and social media commentary, formal surveys, and
third-party
polls and panels. Market Metrix provides all of these services, and
publishes a
quarterly survey of hotel, car rental, and airline experiences of
35,000 customers
called the Market Metrix Hospitality Index™. Pricing starts
at $25 per month
for individual hotels of up to 50 rooms, or $75 for the Enterprise
system.
Clients include Loews, MGM and Viceroy Hotel Group. Brand
Karma and Avalon Report did not respond to requests for an
interview and product demo. For more
information about social
media and reputation management for hotels and to purchase The
Hotelier’s Guide to Online Reputation Management, visit www.danieledwardcraig.com.
Copyright © 2011 Daniel Edward Craig |
Contact:
Daniel Edward Craig |
Also See: | The
Confidence to be Transparent: Why Accor Hotel Group Posts TripAdvisor
Reviews Directly to its Website; An interview with Jean-Luc
Chrétien, Executive VP Marketing & Distribution, Accor /
Daniel Edward Craig / December 2010 |
A
Positive Spin on Negative Reviews / Daniel Edward Craig / November
2010 |
|
Walking
After Midnight: How to Avoid Being Bumped from Your Hotel / Daniel
Edward Craig / October 2010 |
|
Why Everyone Gets a Hotel Room Upgrade... But You / Daniel Edward Craig / April 2008 |