“Nowadays, customers’ reviews are more decisive in the choice of a hotel than its location or price”

Ronald J. Friedlander, President of ReviewPro

ReviewPro was started in early 2008 with the idea that if hotels could listen and respond to what customers are saying about them online, they could improve guest experience and drive revenue growth. Today, ReviewPro offers a web-based, analytical tool that allows hotels to efficiently aggregate, organize and manage their online reputation and presence in leading social media sites.

What are the key aspects in obtaining a good online reputation (and keeping it)?

In principle, offering a quality service should guarantee good customers’ reviews to any hotel and, thus, a good online reputation. However, how to determine the standard quality of a hotel as well as the quality it can aim for? Traditionally, satisfaction surveys and mystery shoppers have fulfilled this function. However today, since the Internet has provided unprecedented power to users -that have moved from being mere prescribers to their closer circle of friends and relatives, to being able to communicate worldwide through specialized websites like Tripadvisor, online agencies like Booking or Expedia, or social media -, the hotel industry has an unlimited source of business intelligence at hand to improve its quality ratios.

The platform developed by ReviewPro not only makes the access to this huge volume of information affordable  -millions of opinions split in more than 100 webs and 21 languages-, but it generates tasks assigning managers and timings, with benchmarking between competitors or hotels of the same chain, and indexes like the Global Review Index ™, a synthesis in a single indicator of all the scoring received by a hotel on the Internet over a specific period of time, made from our own algorithm, and that is becoming the reference standard in the industry. All these features turn us practically into a quality department that works by clicks and, thus, is a key element in identifying areas of improvement, act upon them and develop a hotel’s quality and, so, its competence.

Why is it important for a hotel to have a presence in social media?

Independently of how much a hotel or a chain uses social media in their marketing strategy, it is very important to carry out a deeper analysis of what is being said about them on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare –to mention but a few- through platforms like ours, in conjunction.

In fact, a research made by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch shows that 55% of Facebook users use this social network to consult before travelling, and according to Market Metrix, users’ opinions are today more decisive in the choice of a hotel (51%) than its location (48%) or its price (42%).

Where is the Spanish hotel industry in terms of its presence in social media and online reputation? What are the challenges for our industry on this?

Spanish hotels show a growing interest and concern in regards of their online reputation, as it shows the fact that we work for 17 out of the 25 biggest national chains and for more than 1,300 hotels all over the peninsula.

Today’s challenge for hotels is not therefore, to decide whether they need or don’t need to measure their online reputation, but to determine in which areas of their usual management that information can lead to a competitive advantage.

By our experience with over 3,000 clients in more than 70 countries, the business intelligence generated by our platform is useful for all the departments in a hotel or hotel chain: it is a marketing and communication tool, obviously, but it is also a basic input in order to set up a price policy, to determine the executives’ bonuses, to improve the quality department, and so on.