DALLAS – March 15, 2013 – Once upon a time a hotel survey was filled out in-room on paper. Then it evolved and became electronic, in the form of a post-stay email from the hotel.  Now online reviews on third-party sites are taking the lead and nearly replacing internal hotel efforts to collect data.  In fact, 83% of people will read social media and online hotel reviews, which directly influences their ultimate booking decision.
 
Hotels looking to step back in and be directly involved in this feedback process have enlisted the assistance of third-party partners to survey guests post stay.  TrustYou, an online reputation management market leader for the hospitality industry, is one such partner for data-driven hotels looking increase the feedback they collect.  TrustYou has launched a free online survey, sent out on behalf of the properties, whereby they create custom questions specific to the hotel experience.  The expected return rate of the TrustYou surveys is between 15-25%. This is one of the reasons why the 2000 TrustYou pilot customer hotels using the survey see an average of 45 reviews per month, per hotel. This equals approximately the same amount of reviews from all the review channels like TripAdvisor, Booking.com and others combined.
 
Hotels with the “why wait?” mentality are capturing guest feedback on the spot.  Using iPads and on-site computers guests can fill out a survey before they even leave the hotel, right then and there when the experience is fresh in their minds.  One of the best times to capture feedback is at check-out.  It’s common to ask guests how their stay was (and if your team is not, they absolutely should be).  When the guest begins to gush about the wonderful time they had it’s a great opportunity to kindly remind them about sharing their feedback.  And it’s even better if you can offer them a place to do it before they head out. 
 
The surveys are translated into online reviews that hotels have the option of promoting on its website to provide guests with independent, quality information.  In an effort to be transparent and true to guests, either all reviews must be published or none; selectivity is not an option, nor is editing the content of the review.  Hoteliers have 72 hours to read the review and, if they choose, provide a response that will post simultaneously with the review.  This is not the case when feedback posts on other common review sites; hotels can only respond after the review is up for all to see.  After the 72-hour window, the review will post with or without a response (hotels can respond after the 72 hours as well). 
 
“People ask ‘why is this survey free?,’” said Benjamin Jost, CEO and co-founder of TrustYou. “The answer is quite simple: the more information hotels have, the easier it is for us to demonstrate the importance of monitoring your online hotel reputation.  This also helps to underscore how critical it is to respond to reviews and encourage hoteliers to do so.”  Hotels that respond to guest average 147% more reviews and see an average 6% increase in the overall score.*  An increase in reviews also translates into SEO improvements and more conversions.  Responding to reviews will ultimately result in increased revenue, whether the reviews are positive or negative. 

About TrustYou
Since 2008, TrustYou has set the standard for reputation management with solutions for hospitality-industry businesses to analyze online reviews, tweets and posts across the social web, to gather trusted reviews directly from its customers, and to use the authentic conversations to successfully market online reputations.

TrustYou’s monitoring dashboards capture sentiment and opinions from millions of comments in one easy-to-view place from sources like Tripadvisor, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Yelp and more across 23 different languages. In addition, TrustYou provides free online customer satisfaction surveys and marketing tools for all hotels.  TrustYou's international team hails from 23 countries and speaks more than 20 different languages. The company already has more than 10,000 customers in 60 countries and monitors over 400,000 hotels, provide an extensive base for competitive analysis.  TrustYou’s clients include individual hotels, independent boutique chains, destinations and major global brands such as Accor, Marriott, Starwood, Hard Rock Cafes and Best Western Hotels. The company’s partnerships span an impressive variety of organizations; from tech companies like Google, Trust and Micros, to destination-specific alignment with Germany and Switzerland to develop the countries’ official star-rating systems for hotels. TrustYou’s headquarters are in Dallas, USA and Munich, Germany, with further representatives in the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Central Europe, Asia and Australia. To learn more about TrustYou visit www.trustyou.com.

*TrustYou custom-study of 500 hotels worldwide; September 2012.

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