Alex Bainbridge's Musings on travel ecommerce blog
Musings on travel ecommerce blog
Blog home  Blog home

Negative hotel reviews - its a marketing problem not a product one

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

While the hotel and travel industries rush head first towards adding user created product reviews to their websites - just think a second what you expect to get out of it.

I suggest that you expect to get the odd positive review (that may just be usable within offline marketing and testimonials)…. and you hope that if you get any negative reviews - that “wisdom of crowds” will self correct these negative comments from customers who are happy about the product and are prepared to say so. That is the theory anyway.

I do believe that some, independent, review websites are useful - however they still need to answer a couple of key questions:

  • Will the review be relevant in 2 years time? After all a review of a hotel is related to a point in time - and service levels and facilities can go both up and down. (not the same as a review for a physical item such as a book - where you assume that the physical item remains constant over time!)
  • Is the review rate, board basis or room type related? If your customers take the better rooms - will they be put off by reviews that are from customers that take the worse rooms (especially if this is not clear what the customer booked)? This is particularly a problem if you only contract with the better rooms and don’t sell the lower quality rooms.

However, and back to the title of this post, I believe that the cause of negative hotel reviews are really a marketing problem rather than a product one.

Take a Caribbean holiday for example. Say you sell at 500 GBP (1000 USD) when the standard rate for a nice holiday is 1000 GBP (2000 USD). Many travel websites focus on marketing around the term “cheap”….. which gives the impression to the customer that the 500 GBP holiday is a 1000 GBP holiday “in disguise” and priced low just for them…. Their expectation will be set at the 1000 GBP level - and will review your holiday as if it is a 1000 GBP holiday…… which is why they will write negative reviews…. after all their expectations were not met - even if they enjoyed their holiday.

The 500 GBP holiday they purchased is probably a 500 GBP holiday in reality - and expectations should be set at that true level. If their expectation was set realistically, customers may forgive you for a few service delivery issues.

Unrealistic expectation is set by marketing suggesting that customers are buying “cheap” or “low price guarantee” or “best value”…. this is all suggesting you are getting more than what you are paying for….

Finally, yes there are negative hotel reviews when the hotel is actually bad. However I know that product people within large travel companies try very hard not to list those hotels….. hence if you are still getting negative reviews but from products that you are know are reasonable for your customers…. blame marketing. If they say my idea is rubbish, blame me. Marketing people love to blame IT and vice versa.

Umm…. I think I will go back to travel IT and web - its safer ground for me!


If you want to be notified next time something is published sign up for email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thank you for reading!





More posts (maybe related, maybe not)

Comments are closed.




This blog is about travel ecommerce with a focus on topics of interest to tour operators & travel companies

Alex has previously started up a small tour operator (5 staff) and also worked for leading "dot coms", airlines, hotel chains and tour operators advising and project managing web, ecommerce and reservation system projects.

Alex is available for travel ecommerce consulting via Travel UCD. Travel UCD also operates TourCMS - a web based reservation system for small tour operators


RSS Feed

Subscribe via daily email



AddThis Feed Button

Homepage
About this blog
Best of the blog (top 10 posts!)

Recent comments
Tamara: It’s a lot of money! But I guess it’s probably good value for the column inches it generates - of course as long as you get to the top five! To guarantee that it looks like you have to have...

Alex Bainbridge: Hi Tamara …. as for PhoCusWright….. I am sure that at the point the judges judged they were impartial - however it was a fairly self selecting group who put themselves forward to be judged...

Darren Cronian: Alex, I am worried that we are becoming on the same wave length. http://www.traveldotnet.co.uk/ articles/lets-not-forget-offli ne-travel-innovation/ No, I have just read this post now, I didn’t...

Pete Meyers: Alex - I’m really looking forward to hearing the pirate story, well done!

Ben Colclough: I must say I had more fun acting out a chicken in a restaurant in Yunnan, China than I would have had with the flip book. Seriously though - it is a good idea & innovative. Not sure I would want to...

Alex Bainbridge: Hi Pete The times I would have found this useful (PocketComms) I really wouldn’t have wanted to put an iphone into someone elses hands! For example negotiating with a people smuggling ship in...

Pete Meyers: I think the best innovation is a combination of great ideas and succinct execution. To your example about the PocketComms, it was a good idea that fermented for a number of years, yet who’s to say...

Tamara: This is an interesting debate. I wonder what the PhocusWright judges views are. They seemed to be very clear however that they wanted to reward companies who had actually created something - rather than simply...

Ben Colclough: P&G, generally regarded as a very innovative large consumer branded company has an approach to innovation that throws some light on this. They embrace failure as a necessary part of innovation. This...

Categories
Top commentators
Kevin May
Darren Cronian
Jeremy Head
John
Ben Colclough
Alex Bainbridge
graham steele
Ian McKee
Big Travel Web
Tamara
Guillaume
Ignacio
Neil MacLean
Dominic
John Pyle

Other travel & tourism blogs
Travolution
The Boot
Hotel Blogs
Travel Rants
TraveBlather
Travel PR Blog
Dot Tourism
Albert Barra [Spanish]

Wiwih blogs - a directory of travel industry blogs

Small Fish Big Ocean

Come and join my travel business social network! for small tour operators and niche agents


TourCMS