Qype Logo

Qype is a local review website especially popular in Europe, but with reviews in cities around the world. While TripAdvisor may have more worldwide reviews at the moment, it’s important not to underestimate networks like these. While living in Europe, I found Qype more useful and informative for my own travels.

In this interview, I talk with community manager Rob Hinchcliffe on how hotels should promote themselves on the site, and use the power of guest reviews.

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Josiah: As hotel marketing professionals, we often have to improve our position on guest review sites like yours. What are some ethical ways we can do this – that you approve of? Also, are there any promotional activities you want us to avoid?

Rob: We try very hard to make it easy for any business owner to use Qype in order to promote their business. Really it should be just as intuitive for a business owner to arrive on Qype and know what the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to go about things are as it is for a user who’s there to review something.

The first thing to know is: you can’t get away reviewing yourself in glowing terms (and you definitely shouldn’t start submitting bad reviews on your competitor’s listings!). Social networks are self-policing in that the community is acutely aware of the balance between a genuine piece of content and something that’s spam or self-promotion. And once you submit disingenuous content to a user-generated site you are asking for your honesty to be brought into question. No business owner wants that, so we’ve made it very easy for people to ‘claim’ their business on Qype. Putting your name next to your business and submitting an objective and balanced description of what you do is the best way to start a dialogue with any online community. People respect transparency and they will respond to it in a similarly objective and thoughtful way.

It’s easy to be cautious and petition your friends and colleagues to review your business with five stars and a handful of adjectives like ‘amazing’ and ‘spectacular’, but be aware that users are looking for information, not hype. A genuinely informative and balanced four star review is much more likely to bring in a new customer than a five star review that reads “The best hotel in town. Why would you stay anywhere else? I loved it!!!” So don’t be afraid to ask your customers to review you. Put your Qype URL on your promotional material, send follow up emails asking for feedback, and encourage people to talk about their experiences.

Business owners ask: but what if people are nasty? And I tell them that people are very rarely nasty, and they’re much less likely to be negative if you proactively ask them for their opinion. And wouldn’t you rather find out what the things that are annoying people are now, rather than six months down the line when it’s annoyed hundreds of other people?

If a hotel has a poor reputation on Qype, what steps should they take to improve it?

To quote Douglas Adams: “Don’t panic!” Occasionally a business owners will see a bad review and go into damage limitation mode. That normally means an irate email to our customer support team threatening legal action and nasty comments on the user’s profile. That isn’t reputation management, it’s fanning the flames. Of course if you find defamatory content about your business online then you need to deal with that, but it’s far more likely that, if a customer has taken the time to compose a balanced review of his or her experiences, then they are not out to defame or damage that business, they are trying to express an opinion on a forum that has been provided for them. Luckily that platform also has space for you to respond, a mechanism which didn’t really exist a few years ago. In the past that customer would have gone away, moaned to their family and friends and never come back again. Now you have the ability to take that complaint, deal with it, and potentially win back the customer (and attract new customers into the bargain).

Qype provides a messaging service for business owners to reply privately to reviewers or you can leave a public comment on a review. We encourage people to respond publicly as it shows how willing you are to be up front and transparent about the issue. If the user has a genuine complaint then thank them for bringing it to your attention, apologise, and let them know what you’re doing to fix that problem. Ask them to come back so you can make it up to them, offer them an incentive. That one customer can turn from a detractor into your biggest fan and that two or three star review can turn into five stars with one or two emails.

We’ve spoken to our users, and they’ve told us over and over again that they are more likely to be attracted to a business by an open and friendly owner, than they are by any number of glossy photos or special offers. Once you know that, then it’s just a matter of common sense.

Read more…

Reader Sylvie asks:

“…I do wonder though how many people think we post false reviews as well. I’d like to think that none but I’m sure they’re out there. How does a company go about ’showing’ their integrity? Proving they’re honest?”

Again, I’d like to take some pointers from the world of ecommerce. There, the credibility of the reviews has a large impact on sales performance – so the industry has developed creative ways to prove they’re real.

Here are 3 powerful ways to prove review integrity:

Postcards, letters, and hand-written feedback

Give away free postcards to all of your guests. If you’ve provided a great experience they will often write back to you. I saw this all the time when I worked as front desk staff at a hotel.

If people send you a postcard or letter, scan it and upload it to your website. It’s harder to fake that.

I like what Hotel SO is doing in New Zealand with their online guestbook:

Hotel SO online guestbook

They even posted this to a separate domain for easy reference…brilliant!

Signatures

If you can’t get someone to write you a whole handwritten letter, at least get their signature on a paper (with permission, of course). You can then scan and add it to your website along with their comments in digital form.

Online video or audio

This is the hardest, but most compelling. If you ever have the opportunity (and permission) to record video or audio content of your guests’ feedback, do so. Showcase it on your blog. Featured on your website.

Your goal is to get some guest feedback in rich media formats. Reviews are typically more believable when they aren’t just typed text.

More importantly, make sure there is no reason for someone to doubt the authenticity of your reviews. Most people will trust the testimonials that you post to your website…unless there is good reason to believe otherwise.

Kristy and her husband were not happy with their recent stay at a Utah Comfort Inn. A lack of daily room cleaning and the busload of noisy teenagers staying on the floor above (“like sleeping under a herd of elephants”), caused her to complain to hotel management. Unsatisfied by a discount offer and apology letter, she tweeted about the hotel – getting the attention of Choice Hotels (the parent company).

This story was posted on the Consumerist yesterday, with most of the readers siding with the hotel in this case. Whether this person had a legitimate grievance is debatable, but the bigger issue is that guests are now taking their complaints online.

They go to Twitter

Kristy isn’t alone. A quick search on Twitter reveals hundreds of hotel complaints each day. The stream-of-consciousness format makes it very easy for guests to share what’s bothering them.

They go to their blogs

Ranting about a poor hotel experience on a blog is nothing new: there are whole blogs built around this concept.

The problem with a negative blog review is that it typically has a long shelf life – and can rank highly in search engines for your hotel’s name. This greatly increases the chance a potential guest will find it when they look for you.

Another interesting thing I’ve observed is that unhappy guests will sometimes post a complaint on a seemingly unrelated blog. For example, Wyn complained on my Hyatt Twitter Concierge story that unless the company fixes their customer service and loyalty programs, Twitter isn’t going to help. (point taken)

They go to TripAdvisor, Yelp, Qype…

Of course. You know that.

But even if you have the good humor to create staff t-shirts with 1-star reviews – like San Francisco’s Pizzeria Delfino – these negative reviews can seriously cut into your hotel’s profit.

They go to OTAs

In my experience, hotel marketers generally check guest reviews on sites like Travelocity and Orbitz less often than TripAdvisor.

Unless you monitor your reputation here as well, negative comments could fly under the radar and reduce the revenue you receive through these channels.

They go to Facebook

More and more hotels are moving to set up a presence on Facebook, and as with Twitter, the convenience makes it easy for people to share a bad experience with hundreds of their friends.

They go elsewhere

People can post complaints anywhere on the web: YouTube, Flickr, forums – the possibilities are endless. The reality is that the internet empowers consumers like never before. Anyone can say anything – with a megaphone.

It’s a control freak’s nightmare, but shouldn’t be a huge concern to hotels that make guest satisfaction a top priority.

The lesson

Customers are quickly taking their complaints online if they don’t receive a satisfactory resolution. Neglecting to solve problems offline could really damage your reputation online.

Your Homework: Make sure you’ve set up “listening tools” to quickly catch if someone makes a comment about your business like this.

For a list of free listening tools – plus an action plan for managing your online reputation – see my article on beating negative hotel reviews.