Post on 14-Apr-2018
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Guide
How to Connect with Travelers to Drive More Direct Hotel Bookings
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Index
Introduction
Trends in Digital Hotel Marketing
• Trend #1• Trend #2• Trend #3
Strategies to Drive More Direct Bookings
• Key Hotel Marketing Strategies• Using Technology to Engage Guests• Top Tips for Communicating with Guests
Leveraging Technology to Drive Direct Bookings & Guest Loyalty
• Big Brands Leading the Change• Check-in via Mobile Apps• Improving Website Conversion Rates• Success Story: Opus Hotel
About Us
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Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Introduction
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As more intermediaries get between you and your guests and technology increasingly digitizes the guest experience,
building direct relationships with guests has never been more challenging or important for hotels and brands.
In this guide we discuss how hotels can utilize technology to connect with travelers before, during and after their stay to
enhance the guest experience and drive more direct bookings, profitability and guest loyalty.
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Digital Hotel Marketing Priorities
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What’s your highest priority in digital marketing?
During ReviewPro’s recent webinar, Connecting with Travelers to Drive Direct Bookings and Loyalty, we asked attendees
what their highest priority is in digital marketing today. Of the hundreds of hoteliers in attendance, 63% named “more
direct bookings” as their highest priority. Clearly, if this is a priority for your hotel, too, you can rest assured that you are
not alone!
1%
63%
16%
1%
9%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
More bookings from online travel agencies
More direct bookings
Better traveler reviews and ratings
More engagement on social media channels
Getting through this webinar without being interrupted
Which of the following is the highest priority for you today?
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Trend #1: Consolidation & Growth Among OTAs
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To stay competitive, it’s important to stay current with
changes in traveler behavior and technology. The year
2015 has seen a number of dramatic changes in the online
travel space that have had a direct impact on the ability of
hotels to attract direct bookings.
In recent years there has been tremendous growth and
consolidation among online travel agencies (OTAs). In
September 2015, the U.S. Justice Department approved
Expedia’s 1.3 billion merger with Orbitz. When combined
with previous acquisitions, including Hotels.com,
Travelocity, Trivago and Wotif, Expedia is now the world’s
largest online travel services company by bookings.
Meanwhile, Priceline too has been on a buying spree and
now includes Booking.com, Agoda, Kayak, OpenTable and
digital marketing services company BookingSuite, formerly
Buuteeq, among other brands.
Both of these companies have seen tremendous growth in
recent years. Priceline’s market value is now about U.S.
$70.5 billion, and its shares have increased by almost
7,000% in the past decade and by 20% in the past year
alone. Meanwhile, Expedia has performed even better; its
stock price is up by 50% this year.
Growth and consolidation is not good news for hotels
seeking to lower their dependency on OTAs. It means less
competition among OTAs, greater market share and more
power to negotiate with hotels. According to
PhoCuswright, as of late 2014, when combined Expedia
and Priceline account for 94% of the OTA market in the
U.S. However, travelers still use a variety of channels to
book hotel rooms. Online travel agencies account for only
about a third of the online travel market and generate just
16% of total U.S. gross bookings.
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Trend #1: Consolidation & Growth Among OTAs
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Granted, a certain degree of bookings from online travel agencies is desirable for hotels, helping to fill rooms that may
otherwise go empty. There is also the so-called “Billboard Effect” - many travelers see hotels on OTA listings and then
book direct. But OTA business comes with a cost. Not only do OTAs charge relatively high commissions, ranging from
12% to 30% of room rates, they dominate paid search results, bidding on hotel brand names, driving up cost-per-click
rates and increasing the overall costs of acquisition for hotels.
OTAs also have a commoditizing effect on hotels, leading to less brand loyalty among travelers and more booking
decisions driven by price. Travelers often don’t know that they’re booking through an OTA and don’t understand that
they may benefit from booking direct.
Source: Traveler’s
Road to Decision,
Google, 2014
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices8
Why do travelers book on OTAs?
In a survey of 5,000 U.S. travelers in 2014 conducted by Ipsos
MediaCT on behalf of Google, respondents indicated that their
top reasons for booking on OTA sites included:
• Lower prices or better deals
• Past positive experience or recommendations for the site
• Familiarity with the brand name of the site
• Better tools and options on the site
• Loyalty and rewards programs
• “It’s what came up at the top of a search engine results”
It’s important to understand why travelers book through OTAs
because it provides insights into what it takes for hotels to
compete. Clearly there is a perception among travelers that
OTAs offer lower prices and better deals.
Trend #1: Consolidation & Growth Among OTAs
Best Price Guarantee on hotel bookings. Ifyou find a better price on exactly the samestay elsewhere we’ll match it
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Trend #2: The Rise of New Intermediaries
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Another important trend is the rise of new intermediaries like
metasearch engines and new instant booking features on
TripAdvisor and Google. In some respects the emergence of these
players is good news for hotels because they act as competitors to
the Priceline-Expedia duopoly and give travelers more booking
choices. For hotels they provide new distribution channels. At the
same time, the distribution landscape has become even more
complex and fragmented. With limited time and resources, hotels
must be highly strategic about where they invest their time and
marketing budget.
Metasearch Engines
Metasearch engines like Kayak, Trivago and Skyscanner have been
around for a while now, allowing travelers to compare hotel rates
from a variety of sources on one page, including OTAs, direct
channels and other third-party resellers. Originally they operated
on a cost-per-click model but recently Kayak and Hipmunk have
begun to offer a direct booking option as well. Hotels can bid on
placement in metasearch engine results but currently paid results
are dominated by OTAs and big brands.
TripAdvisor for Hotels: How to Drive More
Reviews, Referrals & Revenue
TripAdvisor has never been more integral to the success of hotels. In this webinar our panelists, including Brian Payeafrom TripAdvisor, bring you the latest industry news, research and tips from TripAdvisor and show you how to boost your hotel’s ranking while driving revenue.
Watch Webinar
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Trend #2: The Rise of New Intermediaries
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TripAdvisor Instant Booking
TripAdvisor has been busy rolling out its new Instant Booking
product, which allows travelers to book rooms without leaving the
site or mobile application. Hotels can bid for placement based on a
commission model of between 12-15%. When a traveler selects a
hotel, TripAdvisor passes the booking on to the hotel to complete.
Many of the major hotel groups have joined Instant Booking,
including Accor, Marriott, Carlson Rezidor, Best Western, Choice
Hotels, Wyndham and Preferred Hotels & Resorts, as well as
numerous independent hotels. According to TripAdvisor, more than
235,000 properties now participate in the Instant Booking program.
OTAs initially refused to participate, but in October 2015
Booking.com was the first major OTA to announce that it will be
joining the program.
As of September 2015, TripAdvisor Instant Booking was available to
all users in the U.S. and the U.K. The company plans to roll the
program out internationally. For more information visit TripAdvisor.
Source: TripAdvisor
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Trend #2: The Rise of New Intermediaries
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Google Hotel Ads Commission Program
Google recently announced that it has retired its
HotelFinder product and is integrating more booking
capabilities and amenity information into search results.
Google’s new Hotel Ads Commission Program allows
hotels to bid on placement based on what it terms as
“industry standard commissions” on actual bookings rather
than the usual cost-per-click model. These commissions
are reportedly similar to TripAdvisor’s, at between 12-15%
of room rates. As with TripAdvisor Instant Booking, Book
on Google allows travelers to book hotels right from
Google; Google passes the booking on to the hotel for
completion.
Google currently works with DerbySoft, Fastbooking,
Sabre, Seekda, TravelClick and Trust International and has
plans to integrate additional technology providers in the
future. Book on Google is currently available to all Hotel
Ads partners and works for users in the U.S. only. The
program is expected to be rolled out internationally. For
more information visit the Google Blog.
Source: Travel Flash Report, Criteo, 2015
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Trend #3: Growth in Mobile Bookings
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Another major trend is the use of mobile devices by travelers to research and book trips. Criteo, a leading performance
advertising technology company, has analyzed over one billion travel bookings worldwide, and its recent Travel Flash
Report indicates that the share of mobile travel bookings compared to desktop bookings has almost doubled in the
past year, from 12% to 23%.
When it comes to mobile hotel bookings, the share of OTA bookings generated from smartphones is about three times
higher than bookings generated by hotel suppliers, according to Criteo. So here again OTAs are taking the lead.
Source: Travel Flash Report
Mobile bookings are growing faster than desktop
Tablets and smartphones accounted for most of
the growth of the online travel industry,
worldwide, across all categories and markets in
H1. Overall, there was a 20% increase in bookings
from mobile devices, compared to just 2% growth
in desktop bookings.
Seasonal growth of mobile bookings worldwide in H1 2014
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Key Hotel Marketing Strategies
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So how can hotels keep on top of these trends and utilize
new tools and technology to drive a higher volume of
lower-cost, higher yield bookings? Here are some key
strategies to consider.
Diversify distribution
Experiment with listings and advertising on new channels
like metasearch and instant booking on TripAdvisor and
Google, where commissions are lower than OTAs, and
they pass the booking on to your hotel, enabling you to
manage the guest relationship almost from the beginning.
Calculate and compare the costs of acquisition
Analyze the costs of each channel and the value of the
guests they generate in terms of rate, length of stay, total
spend and profitability. Direct bookings on your website
may appear to be highly profitable compared to other
channels, but consider the costs of cost-per-click bidding
and other expenditures used to attract and service this
business. Once you understand where your greatest
profits are, invest more resources in these channels.
Manage relationships with OTAs
You’ve heard it before, but part of the reason OTAs have
become so powerful is because hotels agree to terms that
are not in their best interest. Hotels give OTAs liberal
access to inventory and allow them to offer lower rates
than those available through direct channels. It’s critical to
control both the price and the volume of rooms you make
available to OTA channels, to reduce dependency, to
review OTA contracts carefully and to negotiate the most
favorable terms possible. Most importantly, ensure that
OTAs never undercut your direct-booking rates.
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Key Hotel Marketing Strategies
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Be mobile friendly
As more travelers turn to mobile devices to research trips,
communicate with hotels and share experiences, your
hotel needs to adapt with the times. This means ensuring
that your website is mobile friendly and giving guests the
option to communicate with your hotel and provide
feedback on mobile devices.
Focus on guest service
Expedia, Priceline and Google are technology companies
that invest their money in marketing and technology; they
can’t compete with hotels when it comes to customer
service. The better your service and the higher the quality
of the guest experience, the more likely your guests will
come back, book direct and recommend your hotel. This
includes ensuring that phone lines are adequately staffed
in order to capture all those booking inquiries from
smartphones.
Collect, analyze and use data
The volume of data available related to traveler behavior
and preferences is virtually unlimited, but you’ll need to
invest in tools and training to make sense of it. Tools like
ReviewPro will help you aggregate data, analyze it for
actionable insight, and use it to personalize marketing
campaigns and the guest experience. Display review
scores and guest survey scores on your website to show
transparency, increase traveler trust and drive a higher
conversion rate.
Utilize available tools and technology
A variety of tools are available to help hotels connect with
guests on mobile devices, increase conversion rates on
your website, offer pre-stay and in-stay services, and
solicit in-stay and post-stay feedback. We discuss how
hotel companies are utilizing some of these tools in the
next section.
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices16
Using Technology to Engage Guests
How Can Hotels Better Communicate with
Guests?
Another key strategy for driving direct bookings and guest
loyalty is to utilize digital technology to engage guests
prior to arrival and during their stay. Here Drew Patterson,
Co-founder and CEO of CheckMate, shares his top tips
for leveraging mobile technology to communicate better
with guests.
CheckMate, a ReviewPro partner, builds hotel
communications tools to deliver a better guest
experience from before check-in through to departure by
any means of communication - email, text or native app. Drew PattersonCEO CheckMate
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices17
As part of our Webinar, "How to Connect with Travelers to Drive
Direct Bookings & Loyalty", Drew Patterson shared his top tips for
communicating with guests:
• Enable messaging via today’s channels (SMS, email, social, app)
before, during and after stay.
• Use pre-arrival messaging to initiate conversations.
• Conduct in-stay service alerts to identify service issues.
• Support multiple forms of expression (text, images, emoji, maps,
documents, forms).
• Reach all guests (e.g. direct, corp, group, wholesale, OTA).
• Extend the personal touch (i.e. hospitality) into mobile channels.
• Create a single, shared in-box for the customer-facing team.
• Provide “operational” CRM profiles for front-line employees.
Better communication with guests, Patterson says, results in better
guest experiences, greater guest loyalty, stronger TripAdvisor scores
and more direct bookings.
Key Trends & Strategies for Hotel Marketers in
2015
Download our guide to hotel marketing trends in 2015 to discover tips by leading industry experts to improve your marketing activities and results. In this guide we discuss visual shopping, mobile strategies, retargeting, metasearch sites and much more.
Download Guide
Top Tips for Communicating with Guests
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Leveraging Technology to Drive
Direct Bookings &Guest Loyalty
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Now let’s look at examples of how hotels and brands are
utilizing technology to drive higher engagement with
travelers, more direct bookings and greater loyalty.
When it comes to investing in new technology, big brands
are leading the charge. While you may not have access to
big budgets like they do, it’s important to watch what
they’re doing in order to understand where the industry is
heading. You can strive to follow their lead in smaller ways.
Here are a few examples of recent technology initiatives.
Accor Hotels
In October 2014, French conglomerate Accor Hotels
introduced its five-year, 225 million euro plan for
“reinventing the customer experience through technology.”
The plan includes major investments in mobile marketing.
The company reports that more than 30% of its audience is
mobile and about 12% of its direct web sales are generated
by mobile, having increased by 60% in the first quarter of
2015 alone.
Today Accor brands operate 29 mobile solutions, but the
company is in the process of reducing this to one mobile
app for all brands and locations in their portfolio. In addition
to offering bookings capabilities through the app, the
company offers a number of guest services, including digital
check-in, in-stay services, local information and
newspapers. Accor plans to digitize the entire guest
experience in an effort to get more travelers to download
and use its app.
Also worth noting is Accor’s acquisition of digital marketing
company Fastbooking and the opening of its website to
independent hotels. This gives independent properties the
opportunity to access Accor’s sizeable audience of travelers
and to offer Accor loyalty points at lower commissions than
those charged by OTAs while still maintaining their
independence.
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Big Brands Leading the Charge
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Hilton Hotels
Hilton’s HHonors mobile app allows loyalty club members
to search, book and modify their stay as well as use loyalty
points. Hilton hotels in the U.S. now offer digital check-in,
allowing guests to select their exact room prior to arrival.
The company expects to roll out these services
worldwide. The Hilton mobile app is used by over one
million people per month.
Starwood
Starwood’s SPG Keyless program allows loyalty members
to use their smartphone and their Apple Watch to check
in, get their room number and unlock their door.
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Check-in via Mobile Apps
Iphone App Apple Watch App
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Marriott
Marriott is testing out beacon technology in some of its
hotels to push out on-property offers and information
specific to the hotel. Beacons are small transmitters
placed on property that send push notifications to anyone
who is signed into a dedicated app and comes within a
certain distance. Marriott is also educating travelers that
the best deals are found by booking direct and providing
strong incentives through its “It Pays to Book Direct”
campaign.
Jury’s Inns
Jury’s Inns, which operates 28 hotels in the U.K., Ireland
and the Czech Republic and is reputed for offering great
value and warm, friendly service, displays both TripAdvisor
scores and guest survey scores from ReviewPro’s Guest
Survey Solution on listings of all properties on its brand
website. This creates greater traveler trust and results in
higher conversion rates.
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Improving Website Conversion Rates
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices
Success Story: Opus Hotel
Opus Hotel
So what can you do if you’re a small hotel with a relatively modest budget?
Here Nicholas Gandossi, general manager of the 96-room Opus Hotel in
Vancouver, shares how his hotel utilizes technology to build engagement,
loyalty and direct bookings with travelers.
Rated Four-star by Forbes and named one of the Top 5 Trendiest Hotels in
the World by TripAdvisor, Opus Hotel redefines the boutique hotel
experience, with vibrant design, sophisticated style and intuitive service.
The Challenges
Earlier this year, Gandossi and his team identified the following top
strategies for 2015:
• Increase the amount of direct bookings on the hotel’s website
• Gain a higher level of engagement with guests
• Build brand loyalty
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Nicholas Gandossi
General Manager,
Opus Hotel
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices23
We will develop a solution to any concern raised.”
Opus Hotel’s Top Strategies
1. Increase Direct Bookings
To increase direct bookings, Opus knew it had to find
ways to keep travelers from leaving its website to shop
around and to encourage them to book direct. This
required building trust with travelers and giving them the
confidence that they get the best rates by booking direct.
To help advance this goal, Opus invested in a software
tool called Triptease, which displays a widget on hotel
websites listing rates offered on various OTAs, much like a
metasearch engine. Opus also uses software tool
Guestfolio to manage email campaigns and to target
guests who booked through an OTA with an offer of a
10% discount to return and book direct.
2. Increase Guest Engagement
Another strategy for Opus Hotel was to further engage
with guests at different touch points in the travel journey.
The hotel wished to personalize the digital relationship
with its guests and create reasons for a stronger
connection. To advance this strategy Opus turned to
CheckMate, to enable them to connect with guests prior
to arrival and during their stay via mobile technology.
3. Build Loyalty
The third goal for Opus Hotel was to create compelling
reasons for guests to return and to become brand
advocates. To help achieve this goal, they put added focus
on providing a memorable experience and being unique
and fresh with product offerings and services.
TripTeaseWidget
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices24
Tips for Connecting with Travelers
Opus also turned to ReviewPro to collect guest feedback
and aggregate results to help them understand guest likes
and dislikes. The hotel posts genuine responses to online
feedback and takes action where changes are needed.
Opus’s Tips for Connecting with Travelers
Opus’s strategic approach to driving more direct bookings,
engagement and loyalty has generated very positive results.
Through the process Gandossi and his team have learned a
great deal about what works and what doesn’t work.
Here are Gandossi’s top tips for connecting with travelers
digitally:
• Keep it easy and simple; i.e., no download of apps
required.
• Listen to how your guests want to communicate.
• Make sure your communications are not overly sales
focused.
• Offer value to the guest for using any software.
• Don’t overload the guest with communications.
• Treat everyone like a VIP!A TripAdvisor review of Opus Hotel shows the value of guest engagement
Managing Guest Satisfaction Surveys: Best Practices25
About Us
ReviewPro is the leading provider of Guest Intelligence
solutions to independent hotel brands worldwide.
The company’s comprehensive suite of cloud-based solutions
includes Online Reputation Management (ORM) and the Guest
Survey Solution (GSS), which enable clients to obtain a deeper
understanding of reputation performance as well as
operational/service strengths and weaknesses. We provide
actionable insight to increase guest satisfaction, rankings on
review sites/OTAs and ultimately revenue.
The company offers the industry-standard Global Review
IndexTM (GRI), an online reputation score, which is used by
thousands of hotels worldwide as a benchmark for reputation
management efforts, based on review data collected from 161
online travel agencies (OTAs) and review sites in more than 45
languages. More than 19,000 hotel brands worldwide are
currently using ReviewPro’s solutions.
Request a Free ReviewPro Demo now
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