The Revinate Blog

The Facebook Factor Part One: What Fandom Means to Hotels & Restaurants

2012-05-30T08:02:28-07:00

Stock valuation concerns notwithstanding, it is generally agreed that Facebook will reach 1 Billion users in 2012. There is simply no denying the company’s star power in the social media landscape. After spending time to adopt the new timeline format, hotels and restaurants are looking to Facebook to drive business, brand equity, and word-of-mouth marketing. In this two part article I will talk about what Forrester research calls “The Facebook Factor” and discuss how the world’s most ubiquitous social media site can deliver for the hospitality industry.

Forrester Research reccently released a report called The Facebook Factor (April, 2012), where compelling numbers show the impact of Facebook fandom on brand interactions and sales. While this report focuses only on four companies; Best Buy, Walmart, Research in Motion, and Coca-Cola, there is widespread applicability to the hospitality industry.

The reason to have a customer become your fan is logical because they see your posts on their timeline without having to visit your Facebook page. However, this report drills deeper into three specific benefits of fandom and quantifies the responses of fans vs. non-fans. When surveying Facebook fans, the report shows dramatically higher purchases made, consideration of the product, and the likelihood to recommend products to others, as you can seee below.

Fandom’s influence on purchase

Hospitality businesses that benefit from heavy repeat business are in the best position to take advantage of a Facebook fan’s likelihood to purchase. According to Forrester, 79% of Best Buy fans purchased within the past 12 months of the survey. Non-fans who were surveyed only purchased at a rate of 41%. Being a fan of your business nearly doubles the chances that a customer will book. This proves that targeted promotions can drive business quickly. The real-time delivery of marketing messages via Facebook can drive value in your fan relationships and business when you need it most. Hotels will want to consider their average booking windows and the location of many of their fans, before launching promotions. Restaurants may have more flexibility to drive business during slow-demand periods using Facebook promotions. For any business, however, it is important to consider your engagement-to-marketing balance with fans. If you bombard customers with offers and never engage them with information or entertainment, you may begin to lose fans.

Fandom’s influence on consideration

Interacting with Facebook fans mean that your business will stay in your customers’ sphere of consideration both for repeat business and recommendations. Reminder advertising seeks to keep a product in the mind of the consumer once it is already familiar. This can be done in a highly targeted and inexpensive way through Facebook and other social media channels. Updates, anecdotes, and interactions from a hotel or restaurant will keep fans thinking about your business and remembering their experience with you. When they have another need for your restaurant or hotel, they will be more likely to come directly to you, and less likely to consider competitors.

For hotels, there is an additional advantage to this type of loyalty. Customers are less likely to book via an online travel agency when they have a relationship directly with you. This reduces booking costs and the chance that a competing property could lure your customer away. When the average booking through an OTA costs a hotel between $40 and $120 and a direct booking cost between $2 and $6, the savings from having a customer directly loyal to you are clear. Facebook fan bookings can be more profitable than other customer segments and you can offer direct book promotions to maximize this advantage.

Facebook Fandom and recommendations

While all three brand interactions surveyed by Forrester are important to hospitality, recommendations tend to be the most useful to our industry. A report by HMSAI reports that WOM (word-of-mouth) is the top factor in a business traveler’s decisions about hotels and restaurants. In that report 67% stated that they get guidance from co-workers who have visited the area and 60% say they consult business contacts in the area when planning travel.

Even when hotels or restaurants are unlikely to see a customer again within a short period of time, recommendations can be a powerful marketing force. Our industry now survives or thrives on word-of-mouth marketing and Facebook fans can become your best salespeople.

According to Forrester’s survey of over 10,000 US adults, 62 to 83% of fans were likely to recommend the brands tracked. For example, 74% of Facebook fans of Best Buy were likely to recommend the retailer vs. 38% of non-fans. This evidence about the level of recommendations by fans is very enlightening and shows without question the value of social media engagement. Savvy hotels and restaurants can experience a snowball effect, where continued interaction with Facebook fans drives new business from recommendations, which then builds more fans.

Earning Fans and keeping Fans

The most effective way to earn a Facebook Fan is to provide a great stay and/or meal. Forrester warns against advertising solely to get fans on Facebook rather than appealing to current customers to become fans. It is important to realize that a company’s Facebook fans “have an affinity to the brand, not necessarily as a result of being a Facebook fan.” The best fan base is created by customers who have experienced your hospitality. They will be more engaged, more invested, and more likely to repurchase, consider, or recommend your hotel or restaurant. Fans that follow you because you put forward a special offer to become a fan are more likely to end their fandom as soon as they have redeemed the offer. The most valuable fans are grown naturally through great service combined with social media integration.

Once you have gained a fan, the fundamentals of good social media interaction apply. Provide value to your fans through information, entertainment and engagement. Allow your fans the ability to upload photos and stories about their time at your hotel or restaurant. This not only helps your fans feel connected to each other, but humanizes your business. Customer relationships that grow through fan interactions are very persuasive to other potential customers. Consider treating your fans like members of an elite club, not necessarily with perks, but with attention, engagement, and sharing.

When you gain a Facebook fan the cost benefits, relationship benefits, and word-of-mouth benefits are clear. Repeat customers are cheaper attract, cheaper to maintain, and more likely to foster more business. Social media sites like Facebook provide an unparalleled avenue to engage with those customers and keep them loyal. The Facebook Factor is alive and well for the hospitality industry and hotels and restaurants should continue to take notice.

The next step: Brand Advocacy

Turning a Facebook fan into a brand advocate will deepen the benefits of high customer involvement. In part two of this article we will look at brand advocacy for hotels and restaurants. Stay tuned to learn how to turn ordinary fans into brand champions who will promote and market your business in surprising ways and provide excellent insight into how to attract new customers.

Revinate Success Story: Hoteles Mision

2012-05-22T13:17:58-07:00

Thanks for checking out this Revinate Success Story. You may download a PDF version of this article. Please check out additional success stories, and contact us for more information about Revinate.

Hoteles Mision is a chain of thirty-five exclusive hotels that is known for promoting the core values and the tradition of hospitality throughout Mexico and the surrounding region. The cultural diversity, gastronomy and style of Mexico are reflected in their various hotels, making each one unique and perfect for its environment.

Towards the end of 2011, Hoteles Mision began looking for a solution for online reputation management. The team recognized the growing importance of online review sites, such as TripAdvisor, and the influence these sites were having on new bookings. At the same time, they realized that they couldn’t adequately manage the process without an intuitive, automated solution.

Angel Palomero Galicia, E-commerce and Social Media Manager, explains, “We were struggling to keep up with our reviews and our review responses. With so many of our hotels promoted through different OTAs, it was impossible for one person to manually search and find all the reviews out there, let alone recognize trends among the feedback and respond appropriately. We desperately wanted a solution that would allow us to recognize issues as soon as they were raised and respond quickly and efficiently to our guests.”

When the team saw a demo of Revinate, they immediately knew it was the right solution. The easy-to-use, cloud-based solution not only aggregates all the online reviews across all the OTAs into a single dashboard, but also provides tools to analyze sentiment and engage with guests.

Since signing up for service, the hotels have become much more efficient and saved incredible amounts of time. Each property was spending an average of four to five hours a week searching for reviews. With Revinate, they get back close to two hundred hours a year, or 24 business days, that can be spent on other critical tasks.

The hotels have also operationalized the process of managing their online reputation, with the General Managers in charge. Angel explains, “Managing reputation is like sweeping stairs - - you always have to start at the top. It is the responsibility of the hotel manager to detect any problems and work with his team on the quickest resolution possible. With Revinate, it’s easy for them to stay ahead of the curve.”

Responding to reviews has become part of the culture at Hoteles Mision and everyone takes part in the process. Angel explains, “We try to make the responses as personal as possible so if a staff member is mentioned in the review by title or name, we allow that person to respond to the review. Doing so has allowed us to get much closer to our guests.”

The close focus on reviews has proven to be very beneficial to the hotels. While staff loves reading and responding to great reviews, it’s the bad reviews that they obsess over. Angel says, “The negative reviews are incredibly important to us because they allow us to work on improving the services that we offer to our guests. This pursuit of perfection never ends but feedback lets us know where to concentrate our efforts so we’re working as efficiently as possible and making our guests happy in the process.”

Revinate Success Story: BDL Management

2012-05-21T10:54:32-07:00

Thanks for checking out this Revinate Success Story. You may download a PDF version of this article. Please check out additional success stories, and contact us for more information about Revinate.

BDL Management is the UK’s largest multi brand and hotel management company for both branded hotels as well as unique standalone hotels. Specializing in developing and managing hotel assets for owners, BDL has built 30 hotels (3,850 rooms developed) and presently manages 45 hotels.

BDL began using Revinate in March 2012 after a thorough evaluation process of Online Reputation Management solutions. Nik Gupta, Commercial Director at BDL Management, explains, “We spent about nine months closely evaluating software solutions for managing online reviews and social media. It was new territory for us and we wanted to be sure that we didn’t leap into a contract before we were sure that we had found the perfect solution for us.”

After numerous calls, trials and demos, Nik began to focus on Revinate. Of critical importance to him and the team was ease of use. He says, “I really wanted to make sure that our solution was straight forward, even for our non technical staff. Revinate was the clear winner in terms of usability and design. I was confident that anyone, at any property, would be able to use Revinate and find it immediately valuable.”

The other factors that went into the decision to select Revinate were its industry-leading sentiment analysis, strong competitive analytics and price. Nik says, “When we looked at all the vendors and the functionality and quality of the products, Revinate was at the top of the list.”

The rollout and training process went without a hitch. Nik kicked off the process with immediate interal communications to get the hotels excited about the benefits of using Revinate. All the hotels were starting to recognize the impact of online reviews to sales and reputation and they welcomed a solution that would help them manage guest feedback and engagement. Nik says, “The rollout process was incredibly smooth thanks to the account management and training team at Revinate. We had everyone up and running in weeks, which was further proof that we chose the right solution.”

Having utilized Revinate for three months now, Nik is seeing the positive impact that Revinate is having at the hotels. He has received great feedback from all properties and he regularly sees Revinate reports used in meetings to share feedback and drive operational improvements. In addition, he sees that more hotels are paying close attention to reviews and responding to feedback. He says, “Now that everyone has access to Revinate, staying on top of reviews and responding to reviews has become easy versus a time-consuming chore.”

To further operationalize the process of managing online reviews, BDL has created standard operating procedures around Revinate metrics and plans to include goals in future scorecards and as part of the financial review process. BDL’s focus on these metrics proves that online review metrics are quickly becoming as important as more traditional metrics used to measure hotel performance, such as occupancy and average daily rate.

Facebook Introduces 'Offers' for Brands

2012-05-17T14:02:38-07:00

A few months ago, we partnered with our friends at BCV to bring hotels and restaurants up to speed on the Facebook Timeline rollout to brands. In the webinar we discussed all the key ingredients to creating a hearty Timeline for your brand.

As a true social media enthusiast, I am a huge fan of Timeline and it’s ability to aid in telling your brand’s story – how you came to be and all the interesting milestones along the way. In addition to the Timeline rollout, Facebook also recently launched “Offers,” a free service that allows your brand to post offers to Facebook users (e.g. “enjoy a complimentary dessert with the purchase of two entrees”). Fans that click to receive the offer are sent an email to present to your venue (by printing out or displaying on their mobile device) with the offer and any special restrictions clearly displayed in the email. Special restrictions may include such language as “one redemption per customer per day” to keep someone from printing out 100 copies or other abuse. You can also set limits on these offers, similar to a Groupon or LivingSocial Deal where the offer is “sold out” after a set number of people click to receive the deal, helping to limit your exposure.

Offers are a great way to experiment with your Timeline. Not only can they provide engaging content for your fans that require direct action but they also allow you to tie an ROI back to your Facebook efforts. When setting up an offer, be sure to create proper tracking codes in your PMS/POS that allow your staff to indicate when an offer has been redeemed. As with any marketing campaign, it’s always important to brief your staff on the offer details and define a process for tracking and managing redemptions. In addition, I recommend creating a simple spreadsheet that lists each redemption and the total that was spent by the customer during that visit, allowing you to report on how much additional revenue your offers brought in.

So what do you need to get started? If your business has a local address listed in its profile, admins will see the option to create an Offer in the status bar. Here are the specs for Offers:

A 90-character (maximum) headline

A 900-character (maximum — much less recommended!) terms and conditions

A 90 x 90-pixel square image to accompany the post

I’m always an advocate for building customer loyalty and believe that Offers are a great way to increase your fan base and thank them for their loyalty. So before you jump on the flash-sale bandwagon, why not reward the people that care about your business most? With a simple plan in place, there’s not much to lose with testing out this free service!

Why Customer Service and Social are Linked

2012-05-14T17:06:12-07:00

American Express recently published the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer and the results show why it is so important to provide great customer service on social platforms. While the report isn't tailored to the hospitality industry, it's a great source of data for hotels and restaurants wondering whether to devote resources to social media.

For one, the report says, "consumers who have used social media for service tell significantly more people about their service experiences, and say that they'd spend 21% more on companies who deliver great service - compared to 13% on average." In other words, if you can wow your socially savvy guests doing what you do best - providing great service - they will tell others. How can you identify your socially active guests? Monitor foursquare, Twitter and Facebook for any check-ins or mentions of your hotel. Revinate users can easily monitor these mentions in real-time using the Revinate dashboard, and even click through to the person's Twitter or Facebook page, if public, to learn more about him/her. As soon as you catch a mention or check-in, respond to the guest to show that you're listening and responsive to feedback or service issues over social media.

We have amassed great stories from hotel clients that have quickly resolved service issues over Twitter and turned an annoyed customer into a loyal guest that tells others about the high level of service he/she experienced at the hotel. Hyatt Regency Chicago, for example, monitors conference hash tags in the hotel for any facilities issues and responds immediately, wowing the conference attendees and followers with swift action. And it's not just complaints that you want to monitor. Four Seasons comes to mind as a hotel client that has had incredible (public) results sending amenities up to guests' rooms as an extra show of gratitude and service when they receive a check-in or tweet.

In addition, the American Express report shows that "consumers who have used social media for service in the last year are willing to pay a 21% premium at companies that provide great service." So rather than thinking about the expense of monitoring social media for service issues, you can think of it as an investment in your sales programs as happy, socially engaged customers are willing to spend more with you.

Read the whole report here.

Spam Versus Value in Social Media

2012-05-03T16:09:14-07:00

We received an interesting question this morning from a hotelier that highlighted the fact that we, as an industry, are on the leading edge and are thus inventing the future of best practices when it comes to social media and hospitality. The question was whether it is appropriate or not to reach out to a consumer who posts a bad review about a competitive hotel. I thought about this, then put myself in the consumer's shoes and said, "Yes, but only if it's done carefully."

If you are monitoring a competitor's reviews on TripAdvisor, and a reviewer says, "I'm never going back" or "I'm taking my business elsewhere" or you know you can do a better job based on the review, there is no reason why you shouldn't send a private message to the reviewer. (And as if you needed it, this should provide further incentive to make sure you do a great job!)

My advice is to say something along the lines of, "I closely monitor my hotel's reviews to see how we can improve our business and I happened upon your review of the X Hotel, down the street. I would love to invite you to try out our hotel and I will personally oversee your stay to ensure it meets your needs. We are known for our X and Y, as you can see from the reviews posted on this site. Please let me know if I can answer any questions about our services or amenities or help with reservations. It would be our pleasure to have you at the hotel. Thank you."

Don't apologize for your competitor. (eg I'm sorry to hear about your terrible stay in San Francisco.) Don't disparage the hotel or try to one-up your competition. (eg If you're looking for a truly relaxing spa experience, you should've come to us.) Doing so may make you appear too competitive and needy. Instead, lead with your promise of a great stay and keep it positive, personal and professional.

Of course, sending this type of note will greatly raise expectations of your hotel so make sure you can deliver a quality stay. If not, you can be sure the recipient will write a review and throw you under the bus. But if you can deliver an exceptional experience, you will likely have a customer for life.

But what if the review or comment is on social media and not a review site? Should you engage? If the comment is posted to Twitter, I would follow the person and learn a bit about him by reading his tweets. Is this person someone that complains a lot about brands? If so, steer clear. You don't need a chronic complainer at your hotel.

If the person is engaging with many people and brands regularly, he may follow you, which will allow you to send him a direct message (privately). If he doesn't follow you, your only option is to send a public message. I would send a tweet that says, "Hope you had a safe flt home. Let me know if I can help next time u r in SF."

What if the comment is on public Facebook page and you have the option to send a private message? Personally, I would be ok (even excited) if a brand reached out to me but many people that I speak with think that Facebook is a platform for trusted relationships. Many people that have public pages don't even realize that their pages are set to public so tread lightly here. If, when looking at the page, you see engagement with brands or other clues that lead you to believe that he would welcome your note, say, "I hope you don't mind me reaching out to you. Your page is viewable to the public and I see that you recently visited San Francisco. If you should return, I would love the opportunity to win your hotel business and I would personally oversee your stay. Please let me know if I can help you with reservations or questions about the city. Thank you."

Agree? Disagree? I'd love any feedback below.

Revinate and Your Bonus Collide

2012-04-25T17:38:33-07:00

Over the last few days I have spoken with three hotel executives from different management companies that are including Revinate metrics in their employee bonus programs for 2012. We have been recommending this practice since we rolled out GS2 Reports almost a year ago, encoraging hotels and brands to set goals and measure results, and while I would like to think that our messaging was heard loud and clear, I think there are actually many factors in play that make 2012 the right time to include social media metrics in bonus programs.

First, the ROI around social media is no longer as elusive as it once was. Many great minds have been studying the effects of social media marketing and the power of online reviews and all signs point to the fact that both make great business sense for the hospitality industry. Bain and Company, for example, recently reported that customers who engage with companies over social media are more loyal and they spend 20 percent to 40 percent more with those companies than other customers do. And Market Metrix has been reporting on the shifting factors that go into consumer booking decisions. Whereas location and price used to be the top factors in booking decisions, online reviews and recommendations are now at the top of the list.

Second, it is now possible to easily operationalize social media. Last year many clients were still figuring out their voice on social media and online review sites. They also hadn’t yet determined objectives around Facebook, Twitter, location-based services and online review sites. But today, the majority of our clients have standard operating procedures in place. Many have incorporated social media best practices into their brand guidelines and have made social media part of every department’s purvue. And, of course, they are using workflow features in Revinate to ensure that feedback from reviews and social media is acted upon and responded to in a timely manner.

Third, hoteliers are realizing the powerful benefits of having plentiful online reviews. In addition to helping to improve their ranking on TripAdvisor and driving more business to the hotel, the feedback, when analyzed using Revinate’s sentiment analysis, provides real-time, valuable data about what guests love and hate at the hotel. Through Revinate, hoteliers now have the power to bring guest feedback into the decision making process. Revinate is now being relied upon for capital improvement projects, training and standard operating procedures.

And of course when hotels focus on receiving great online reviews, they pay closer attention to guests’ needs. Guests notice the extra level of service and write great reviews and the cycle repeats, driving more and more people to book at the hotel.

Finally, it is now easier than ever to measure success on online review sites and social media. Revinate provides dozens of reports and metrics to show how a hotel or brand is doing over time or against the competition. Our GS2 Reports allow brands and hotels to set goals across regions or properties and see how they’re doing against their goals on weekly or monthly basis. Aggregating these stats used to take days; now it takes less than a few minutes.

Are you planning on rewarding employees based on review metrics and social media feedback? Please let me know in the comments, below, or by emailing Michelle at Revinate.com.

Tips for Using Social Media to Drive Loyalty

2012-04-12T14:17:07-07:00

Following a fabulous vacation in Mexico a few months ago, I unpacked my bags and logged into TripAdvisor to write a review of the 5-star boutique hotel where I stayed. I gave the hotel five stars and wrote about how beautiful the property is and how friendly and attentive the staff was. The day my review was posted I received a call from the General Manager of the property. He said he wanted to personally call me to thank me for writing such a nice review and he looked forward to welcoming me back to the hotel in the future. The entire call took less than a minute but I have mentioned it to at least fifteen friends and shared the story during a talk I just did about ‘Owning the Customer’ at The Hotel Data Conference. I know that I will be back to stay at the hotel again. In an industry that often thinks about rooms and rates more than people, this GM made me feel special and appreciated. And all it took was a minute of his time.

Why did his call matter to me? In a time when we share information with friends in quick status messages on Facebook or 140 character tweets, it is rare for someone to go out of his way to make a personal connection. So when a hotel representative takes the time to make you feel singled out and appreciated, it goes a long way. Luckily, social media provides many opportunities for hoteliers to make guests and prospects feel special.

Read and Respond to Reviews

While it might not be realistic for you to track down everyone who writes an online review for your property and place individual telephone calls, you can still touch the guests that write reviews. Many of the review sites, including TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, Expedia and Travelocity allow you to publicly respond to reviews. If you’re part of the majority of hotels that are not responding to reviews today, you must start responding immediately. Responding to negative feedback sends the message that you care about the guest experience, you are sorry when guests are disappointed, and you seek out guest feedback as a way to improve your operations. Responding to positive reviews sends the message that you appreciate your guests and are happy that they had a great stay with you. Responses to positive reviews are also an opportunity to decorate your profile on review sites with messages about what you are doing well.

But don’t take my word for it. Forrester and TripAdvisor conducted a study last year and the results clearly show that responding to reviews makes a difference to consumers. In fact, 79% of respondents agree that seeing a management response to a bad review is reassuring. And 78% say that seeing a management response to a good review makes them think highly of the hotel. And, because I read dozens of reviews every day at Revinate, I can tell you that I often see reviews that say that the reason the guest chose to stay at the hotel in the first place was because management takes the time to respond to reviews.

Listen and Engage

I know you’ve heard this before, but if you have a Twitter account and a Facebook page, you must monitor them regularly or you will do more damage than good. As a consumer, I expect responses to come in less than an hour. Others might be more lenient but a response within 12 hours is a must. Imagine calling customer service and having the representative say, “Your feedback is of the utmost importance,” and then hanging up on you without uttering a word as soon as you give your feedback or ask your question. You’d feel pretty rotten. And you would likely not support that company any more. And at dinner, you would probably share your experience with your family, who might share it with their friends the next day. The bottom line is that if you have accounts on these platforms, the expectation is that you will monitor and engage. If not, remove your accounts until you can allocate the resources necessary to support your customers.

So what are some examples of hotels getting engagement right? Many conferences today use a Twitter hash tag to allow conference attendees to share ideas during the event. At a recent conference I attended, someone tweeted that the ballroom where the keynote was taking place was freezing. Less than two minutes later, the hotel responded to the tweet saying, “Coming down to lower AC. In the meantime, hug a neighbor for heat. ;)” In addition to showing some personality, the hotel demonstrated to hundreds of people that it deeply cares about its guests and goes the extra mile by monitoring tweets from the conference just in case issues around the hotel arise. And trust me, the story spread all over the conference. Even people that weren’t on Twitter heard the story from their colleagues and left with a positive feeling about the hotel.

Guests are talking about you off property as well. They’re sharing their travel experiences on blogs, uploading photos to Flicker, videos to YouTube, and sharing recommendations with friends on Facebook. How special would you feel if you posted a video of the scene at the hotel pool and you received a comment from a representative of the hotel thanking you for your stay and telling you that he is saving you a pool chair for your return visit? You would think, “Wow! I need to go back to that hotel. They really care.” Smart hoteliers are taking the time to find this content and let guests know that they are listening and that they want personal relationships with their guests.

Monitor for ‘check-ins’

I once checked-in to my local wine bar and the GM came over a few minutes later with a glass of wine. He said he just wanted to thank me for choosing to spend my time at his bar. This type of service happens so rarely that I was surprised and amazed, but mostly really impressed. I immediately tweeted about the experience and have told so many people this story that I swear this will be my last telling. And of course, his wine bar has become my regular hang out.

Some savvy hoteliers are starting to monitor Foursquare, Facebook Places and other location-based services for virtual check-ins. When a guest checks-in using his mobile device, the hotel representative sees the check-in and responds with a tweet welcoming him to the hotel. Or, if the hotel can identify the guest, a hotel representative might come by personally to welcome him, or send an amenity up to his room with a nice handwritten note. I have seen quite a few of these examples shared this year on blogs and on Twitter.

If this just sounds like great service, or hospitality, you’re right. All these simple tokens shouldn’t knock your socks off or overwhelm you. But the sad truth is that people have become so invisible at most hotels, that any extra touch is unexpected and goes a long way towards driving loyalty. Hoteliers have a real opportunity today to take advantage of consumers’ perceived invisibility to make a big impact.

If monitoring for all this content sounds like an overwhelming task, you’re likely not using a software solution to scour the Web and social networks for mentions of your property. Since I work for a company that develops such a solution and I know how easy it can be for hoteliers to monitor and engage with guests, there really is no excuse to stay detached from your customers. But if you want each guest to tell dozens of their friends about their experience with you, you will recognize that you can’t afford to ignore it any longer.

Revinate Success Story: Solaris Hotels

2012-04-11T15:52:44-07:00

Thanks for checking out this Revinate Success Story. You may download a PDF version of this article. Please check out additional success stories, and contact us for more information about Revinate.

Solaris Hotels in Mexico is a group of four hotels with only one mission: to make guests happy. Pioneers in the “all inclusive” concept for more than 20 years, Solaris Hotels prides itself on knowing what guests want out of their vacations and creating unique and memorable holiday experiences. The hotels live by the motto, Service is our Passion.

Sticklers for exceptional service, staff at the hotels have been focused on online reviews as a measure of guest satisfaction for years. But until they signed up for Revinate service, they had no way to operationalize the feedback. Analia Veccar, Social Media Manager, says, “Revinate has helped us to create a formal program around our reviews. For example, the sentiment analysis feature allows us to quickly and easily analyze guest feedback from online reviews so we can understand what guests love about our properties and where there’s room to improve. We use this feedback to create action plans and bring the voice of the customer into our discussions around new services and amenities.”

Staff members at the hotels also use Revinate to reply to online reviews and share great reviews publicly. Analia says, “With online reviews influencing booking decisions, it’s great to be able to show prospective guests that we take feedback seriously. By responding to reviews and sharing feedback on our social media channels, we send the message that we monitor for feedback and truly care about the guest experience. With links to respond to reviews and share buttons that allow us to tweet links to reviews, Revinate makes it really easy.”

Revinate also takes the manual work out of creating and sharing reports and trending information. Every two weeks, staff at the Solaris Hotels download the relevant Revinate reports that they need for management and 1:1 meetings. The reports allow them to easily track success around online reviews and social media and see how they’re doing against their competitive set hotels. Analia notes, “Because all the information is compiled automatically and can be customized by review site, date or guest sentiment, Revinate saves us hours each week, which is time that can be better spent pleasing guests and creating memories.”

Revinate Success Story: Crown Paradise Club

2012-04-02T20:51:03-07:00

Thanks for checking out this Revinate Success Story. You may download a PDF version of this article. Please check out additional success stories, and contact us for more information about Revinate.

The Crown Paradise Club prides itself on having something for every traveler to Cancun. Lisa Juliot, Social Media Community Manager explains, “Our resort is special because it was created for families, singles or friends. We arrange gorgeous weddings and professional conventions. We also have wonderful adults-only spaces for couples. We also have a childrens’ club areas for different age groups and even a special teens’ club with movies, Wii, pool table, air hockey and arcade games. We make sure that everyone can have a great time with us.”

Prior to Revinate, The Crown Paradise Club was using Google Alerts and manual searches to understand what was being said about the property online. It was a time consuming process and not nearly as comprehensive as they wanted. When the team looked at Revinate for the first time they were excited that could not only effectively monitor and manage their own reviews and mentions, but also those of their competition. Lisa says, “Revinate gives us a wonderful way to measure our social media presence and our progress in achieving our social media goals. And knowing how we stack up against our competition is an added bonus.”

In addition to the Social Media Community Manager, the Sales Manager at the property is an active Revinate user. While Lisa uses Revinate’s easy-to-use dashboard to find and mange information from numerous social media sites, the Sales Manager uses Revinate’s sophisticated reports and analytics to measure the hotel’s progress in social media and identify problems through customer feedback. Both staff members rave about Revinate’s time-saving features and ease of use. Lisa says, “Revinate saves us an incredible amount of time pulling weekly reports together and aggregating content from thousands of sources into a single location. It easily saves us 8 hours a week, if not more. It easily pays for itself each month in time savings.”

Revinate’s Sentiment Analysis report is a favorite feature of the hotel. They use it to gauge the likes and dislikes of their guests to better understand the voice of the customer. Lisa says, “Sentiment Analysis is an amazing feature for hotels. To be able to drill down into any service and amenity to see guest sentiment is incredibly powerful. We use the reports to follow-up with management to ensure that our guests’ voices are heard so that we can constantly improve. As a hotel that truly caters to our guests, it’s a tool that we never want to be without.”

About Revinate
Revinate helps hotels compete with a user-friendly software solution for managing and tracking reviews and media mentions on OTAs and social networks. Developed exclusively for the hospitality industry, Revinate allows hotels to turn online guest feedback into actionable plans to quickly respond to competition and market demands, increase customer satisfaction and drive revenue. Revinate is based in San Francisco and has clients worldwide. To learn more, visit www.revinate.com.