While it’s all very good to know what their customers are saying about them on review sites, and most hotels now have tools that enable them to do that, the critical elements to act on this year are engagement and action.
Revinate's vice president for global business development Josh Steinitz said that while ratings will always be important because they driveconsumer booking decisions, engagement and action are just as critical to success.
“Unless hoteliers are using online reviews and social feedback to engage with guests in real time and improve the guest experience, they are missing out on the power of the channel,” said Steinitz, whose company is setting up an Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore this year.
And if 2013’s buzzwords in online reputation management and social media monitoring were engagement and awareness, Steinitz’ choice of two words for 2014 are “transparency” and “recovery”.
“Transparency – hotels need to be completely transparent in how they market themselves to guests since if there is any discrepancy, guests will be sure to mention it in their post-stay reviews.
“Recovery - by proactively reaching out to guests who are communicating about poor experiences, hotels can actively participate in building and maintaining their customer bases – it’s the most basic form of customer relationship management.”
Asked which two companies travel suppliers should watch in 2014, Steinitz picked Google and TripAdvisor.
“Google’stravel offering is changing the fastest and has the biggest potential to be the most disruptive, as can been seen from the changes to Search/Hotel Finder over 2013.
“For hoteliers, however, my answer is TripAdvisor. Ask any GM for his ranking in his market and he will tell you without having to look. Hotels are very focused on where they rank on TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index and recognize that they must focus on quality of reviews and frequency of reviews in order to improve.
“I also believe that TripAdvisor’s move into direct meta-search and the extension of that effort to include smaller brands and properties via TripConnect will only reinforce the importance of this channel for hoteliers.”
Revinate is starting 2014 with an aggressive expansion plan, starting with Singapore as its new APAC headquarters. It also added a sales office in Abu Dhabi last year. “We recognize the significant opportunity in Asia Pacific and the Middle East and are staffing up in both regions.” Younes Hammoumi, formerly from Trust International, has joined the Singapore team as head of business development.
The year closed strong. “We ended the year with close to 23,000 customers, a 60% growth over 2012. Our most robust growth comes from small- to medium-sized brands and management companies, up 125%, and stand-alone hotels, up 107%- a testament to the influence of social media and online reviews across the industry.
“New hospitality groups that we added in Asia include Archipelago, Banyan Tree, ITC, Langham, Aitken Spence, Jumeirah, Rotana, Emaar, and Rendezvous.”
On the product side, Steinitz is promising “several major new product launches that we believe will revolutionize the way hotels and guests connect”.
He declined to disclosed details but said, “Our focus is to continue to help hotels connect with guests in new and innovative ways. We are approaching the problem of communication from both the guest and the hotelier standpoint to ensure that our solutions are both engaging and serve a critical business purpose.”
In 2013, it launched both iPhone and android native apps, becoming the first in itsspace to provide mobile B2B solutions for the industry. It alsolaunched Revinate Post-Stay Surveys,what it says is “a disruptive take”on the traditional Guest Satisfaction Survey (GSS).
“Compared to traditional GSS, Revinate Post-Stay Surveys drive higher response rates and uncover valuable review-style feedback so hotels can easily isolate issues and implement critical operational improvements leveraging Revinate’s sentiment analysis.
“And, with Revinate Post-Stay Surveys, hotels can harness this valuable feedback to increase bookings by publishing reviews directly to their website, Facebook page, Twitter feed or TripAdvisor to start social conversations about the property. With all online feedback and solicited reviews consolidated in Revinate, hotels have access to 360-degree reporting for all customer experiences.”
Competition is of course intense in this space given the growing influence of traveller reviews on customer decision-making and Steinitz said Revinate’s focus “has always been on providing the most robust, yet easiest-to-use software solution to hotels, management companies and brands”.
It has a product and technology team based in its headquartersin Silicon Valley, and adaptations will be made to the new markets it is entering.
“Obviously there are language considerations when developing software solutions for the international market. Revinate now offers native language sentiment analysis in both Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese, and our core application is also available in many languages.
“Shortly, we’ll also be fully internationalizing our surveys product. At the same time, we’re constantly adding new review sites and social networks with strengths in specific geographic markets. For example, we offer access to Sina Weibo integration for our APAC customers who depend on Chinese guests.”
Steinitz says this is the year the industry in Asia will sit up and take notice of Revinate. “Several of our new products soon to roll out will have major impacts in APAC in that they represent new areas of innovation in parts of the hospitality ecosystem that are growing particularly fast in Asia, and are not merely extensions of existing well-known products in the market.
“Metatrends like growth in the importance of customer feedback and the migration to a mobile-first experience are happening faster in Asia than anywhere. At the same time, you’ll see Revinate start to put ourselves in front of the Asia market more explicitly than we have in the past (when we operated mostly behind the scenes) now that we have some senior people on the ground.”