The TripAdvisor Debate: Do Travelers Really Care?
5 Comments
The past few weeks have seen a lot of articles written about TripAdvisor: the integrity of their reviews, and how relevant they are today. My own exclusive interview with TripAdvisor drew some skeptical comments, as did Darren’s a while back:
“The ultimate loser here is likely to be TripAdvisor, since this doesn’t help their credibility which already seems to be suffering…”
“TA is looking for SEO with their UGC page creation and to drive traffic to their OTA partners…it’s incredible people still believe and trust this hotel reviews platform.”
But I’m not convinced travelers really care that much.
“…We find that most guests use the ‘pinch of salt’ view when reading reviews and form a balanced opinion of our resort before they arrive.”
Review integrity is important, and TripAdvisor is taking steps to ensure that. But whether TripAdvisor is really an OTA in disguise? I seriously doubt that keeps their 15,000,000+ weekly users up at night.
I say fish where the fish are.
Maybe this whole debate is just a case of industry myopia.
What do you think?
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As the director of a small independent hotel group that represents properties all over Mexico,I constantly monitor what is being said on Tripadvisor. I’ve found that generally you can get a feel for a hotel if reading multiple comments and you can also tell when a bad comment is perhaps a little too ‘passionate’. In speaking with our own clients, I’m rarely told Tripadvisor made the decision for them but once in a while they do mention having read reviews before looking us up.
It’s sad to think that reviews could be ‘false’ but there is no real way of ever knowing this. I, myself, have posted reviews on Tripadvisor after staying at some of our properties (and other non-affiliated hotels as well) and have been careful to never turn it into a ‘ad’ for my company. No links, no mention, nada. Not all my reviews are posted however and I’ve wondered why. Obviously, there is no real person to answer that for me.
Now, on our website we post reviews after having asked our clients for their permission. Then again, we also contact them one by one, after they left one or more of our properties. We can do that. We’re small. 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? Our repeat clients know us but what about everyone else out there…
Josh,
I know TripAdvisor can be infuriating to hoteliers – like whenever there is a bad review. As a result they love to hate TA; come up with any reason they can to denigrate it. Bogus reviews, competitors salting the site, inaccurate, alleged guest never stayed there and on and on.
There hasn’t been one guest registering at one of our luxury hotels that hasn’t read TripAdvisor reviews before booking. Let’s face it guests love it.
Hoteliers have to stop complaining about TA and start instituting programs designed to make TripAdvisor (and the reviews guests post) work for them. Get staff involved. Develop programs to get happy guests to post positive reviews (watch TA guidelines). Our hotels do and it works.
If owners designed compensation programs based on customer satisfaction as reported on TA, I think there would be a lot less complaining and a lot more planning going on.
TripAdvisor isn’t going away. Deal with it. Research has shown that online reviews are just slightly less influential than recommendations from friends and relatives – the most effective form of advertising a hotel can have.
@Sylvie – Do you see any problem with writing reviews for your own hotels?
Regarding making the other guest reviews more credible: I think you just gave me an idea for an article….
@Madigan – Solid thoughts: guests love TA, hoteliers love to hate it.
I love your idea of building compensation plans around guest satisfaction. Whenever there are incentives involved, people do less grumbling and take more action.
And the research you mentioned is something we all need to keep in mind.
TA is a topic which gets raised by the vast majority of prospective hotel clients. The main thing they want to know is how do you get to the top of the rankings. They seem to think that the rankings can be fooled or a position on the site bought.
I have run a small group of UK based hotels and we found the best way to get TA working for you was to proactively manage every part of the hotels listings and keep them up to date. More guests seem to be looking up hotels on TA before travelling and it stands to reason that percentage wise more of them will post reviews once they have stayed. The best way to move up the rankings will be to have more, better quality reviews posted so any poor reviews diminish as a percentage of the total.
What hoteliers should be doing is take on board the comments which are posted & manage their listing by posting responses to both good and poor reviews & keeping images and descriptions up to date. Work on the positives.
What TA should be considering is 1) to work with hoteliers to communicate improvements & investments to properties to TA users 2) to put a time limit on how long a review should be displayed for before it becomes irrelevant 3) reward the properties who maintain their listings and use the management response system – after all, we may have differences of opinions with customers but by taking part at least it shows we care.
I wonder if TripAdvisor hasn’t peaked in usefulness? It takes a lot of effort to identify target properties and then sort through the many divergent reviews. It’s better than nothing from a consumer point of view, but I can’t help but think that a better way is going to come along.