According to a recent Hospitality Technology Magazine article, many major hotel brands are enhancing their Online Reputation Management (ORM) efforts by leveraging guest intelligence.
The premise of the piece is that ORM should leverage both online reviews and guest satisfaction survey data, which include both during- and post-stay surveys. In many ways, these efforts tend to focus more on managing online reputations – as opposed to trying to please the guest in the long-term.
From a public relations perspective, online reviews are very important. For example, according to the article, 89 percent of global travelers consider online reviews important to booking. In addition, 53 percent of travelers won’t book a hotel without any online reviews.
However, there is always the risk that online reviews and comments can be skewed, or are not 100 percent valid. With potentially faulty data, it’s all too easy for hoteliers to make decisions based on the wrong information.
To counter this, several major hotel brands are starting to develop marketing personas for each type of traveler. This, along with compiling the right guest analytics – via new mobile apps – can provide a snapshot into what the guest truly wants.
As we have highlighted before, this is where a Predictive Guest Marketing™ system (PGM) comes in. PGM looks not only at the persona, behaviors and experience ratings of the guest, but also takes into consideration the same data points gathered from guests with similar personas. It can also create an intelligent query for the guest’s persona that can be triggered on demand.
This type of actionable intelligence can help drive offers and other local attraction recommendations to guests that are truly dynamic and personalized. This will also help to counter any bad online recommendation, and ultimately create long-term brand loyalty.