How is your Social Reputation?

In a previous post I spoke about the importance of different data sources for decision-making in the hotel industry. With this post I will start a series of posts about the importance of each of the data sources mentioned there.  

The first data source I'm going to cover is social reputation . I chose to start with this one not because "it's trendy", but because it is one of the main influencers of hotel purchases , with some studies even mentioning that it is the main decision factor, slightly ahead of price and location .

Social reputation can be used by a hotel unit to carry out comparative analysis with its competitive set, forecast cancellations, forecast demand, segmentation analysis, among other types of analyzes and forecasts.

The ubiquity of the internet has introduced new communication methods that have promoted the rapid growth of User Generated Content (UGC). Normally, when we think about social reputation, we think about online comments , that is, the famous reviews published on websites such as Tripadvidor, Booking.com, Zoover, among many others. However, UGC are much more than that: they are tweets , vacation photos and comments published on Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr or Instagram; These are videos on YouTube or Periscope, among other platforms.

It is recognized that online reviews are the preferred means chosen by many potential customers to get to know a hotel before making a purchasing decision, but the impact of other means should not be overlooked.

We must not forget the old maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words and therefore, media that show images of hotels and videos - especially videos that demonstrate good experiences lived by the author - have a strong influencing power . This is one of the main reasons why it is said that Wi-Fi should be free in hotels, allowing guests to take charge of the hotel's marketing and, ultimately, the tourist destination themselves.

As online reviews are the method most used by customers when looking for hotels, it is also normal for this to be the subject of the largest number of studies. Most of these studies focus on the quantitative component of these comments, that is, on the grade/ rating assigned. But more and more studies are being published on the qualitative component of comments. In fact, some studies even mention that customers who read online comments give much more importance to the textual component than to the note/ rating of the comment. The text seems to better testify to the experience lived by those who published the comment than the note/ rating . Furthermore, the texts of online comments also allow you to identify areas/topics to which potential customers give greater or lesser importance. For example, if a customer looking for a hotel for a relaxing holiday reads reviews that talk about the excellent fact that the Kids Club is next to the main pool and that children can play freely in that pool, this may lead them to not choose that hotel. . Another example is the case of a customer searching for a city hotel to visit on business, and looking for a hotel with a gym, but finds reviews saying that the gym is only open from 8am to 8pm or that the quality of the gym is poor. of this hotel.

What I want to emphasize with this is that a systematic and exhaustive analysis of the textual component of online comments must be carried out and not just an analysis of satisfaction and mitigation of problems reported by customers. The qualitative component of online comments has the power to highlight what the hotels' weaknesses and strengths really are and thus allow actions to be taken to correct or enhance them.

It is, therefore, essential that hotels use tools that allow them to know their social reputation and that of their competitive set , but these tools must allow them to go far beyond the quantitative component of online comments . It must encompass the aggregated knowledge that can be extracted from the text of these comments and, in some way, it must also reflect the ability of hotels to encourage customers to promote their publications on all types of social reputation platforms.

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