The best opportunities for hotels to use social media in 2012 (Part 2)

In this first article in a series, we review the major changes in technology over the past year and analyze how they will play an important role in the coming year.

In this post, we’ll look specifically at changes regarding comments and user-generated content.

The rise of the commentary economy

Over the past year, we have seen some of the lessons learned from user reviews being used in more areas than just reputation management and public relations. It is being applied to all departments of hotel and travel companies: sales, marketing, operations, quality control, revenue and distribution.

This has led to what I call the “review economy,” an environment where user feedback plays a big role in every aspect of a company.

The effect is due in part to the rapidly changing nature of user-generated reviews, as well as better analytics that can separate the useful from the clutter and reveal patterns in behavior.

In terms of the validity of reviews, we are seeing a shift away from anonymous review sites to companies collecting feedback: reviews are validated by the booking process.

In December, Expedia unveiled its new Verified Reviews system, which includes only feedback from guests who have stayed at a property (reviews are required to be sent in response to a booking confirmation email).

"We call it the new source of truth internally," John Kim, senior vice president of global product at Expedia, told USAToday. "People expect our reviews to be verified, so you can't just post random reviews."

Hotels are also catching on to the trend. In October, Starwood Hotels unveiled its ratings and review system.

Users of Starwood's Preferred Guest system can review hotels where they have stayed in the past 18 months - provided they provide proof of loyalty membership or a reservation confirmation number from the time of stay.

After collecting at least five reviews, unedited reviews will be posted to the hotel website. Starwood hotel managers use this method to encourage customers to become more engaged with the company and attract more repeat bookings.

I have spoken to a number of hotel marketers who believe that other hotels are likely to follow Starwood’s lead and begin collecting their own guest reviews. This, and the fact that more reviews are being validated by bookings, gives managers more assurance that the feedback is credible to support management decisions.

However, such high-quality data is useless without the right tools to extract meaning from it. Over the past year, review collection and analysis technology has become more sophisticated, and we are now seeing some interesting advances in this area from some hotels.

Hotels like Cristina Mulet and her team at Sol Melia Hotels have been very successful in collecting customer insights on social networks and using them to improve products, manage quality and optimize revenue.

Similarly, Diego Sartori and his team at CitizenM Hotels take online review feedback into account when opening each of their new hotels, while Ricardo Samaan at Olivia Plaza uses this method to improve the quality of their hotel breakfasts.

In order to leverage customer feedback to continuously improve product quality and business performance, semantic research on online reviews can help identify key issues that need to be addressed.

Detailed department-level reporting for each manager is essential, as is a workflow system that manages the entire product improvement process. This requires a culture of using customer feedback to guide the improvement process, co-creating with customers to help hotel and travel brands build loyalty and create products that better suit market needs.

Semantic technology makes sentiment analysis smarter

This week, Valyn Perini wrote an article on Tnooz about the opportunities semantic technologies will bring to customers, but also about the huge opportunities in using semantic analysis to understand sentiment in online customer feedback (as Martin Soler and I discussed in September 2011).

Semantic analysis provides travel industry managers with valuable insights into improving their operations and marketing communications by instantly displaying what customers are saying about various aspects of their company.

Here is a semantic analysis report for a popular hotel in New York City:

As you can see, quality, location, views, and the bar are all aspects of the hotel experience that guests actively discuss. These elements should be reflected in all marketing communications and mentioned repeatedly in advertising copy.

At the same time, we can see that price is seen as a negative factor. This often happens when the hotel wants to create an impression of "great value" but the guests do not perceive it that way.

By focusing on the elements that customers appreciate most, the hotel can increase the effectiveness of its communications and guide customers' perception of the hotel before booking.

Promoting these features of your hotel through advertising will likely lead to a better online reputation because the ads will attract customers who appreciate the hotel's strengths.

Short, mobile-based reviews are becoming more popular

Written reviews initially were the standard format for travel planning sites, but the rapid growth of social networking and mobile communications has made short, mobile-based reviews increasingly important.

I find myself increasingly reluctant to write long reviews of hotels or restaurants – simply because I don’t have the time.

But it’s very convenient to use the free time while waiting for someone to post a Weibo or check in through Foursquare and leave a few words. I think I’m not the only one who would do this.

The growing popularity of mobile-based social networking, coupled with travelers’ time constraints, is likely to make the app even more important in the coming year.

For companies using social networks for services or reputation management, it is important to pay attention to this feedback. And given the real-time nature of the network, reaction time is also critical.

However, while browsing all the Weibo and social network content, hotel managers can also extract insights about operations and markets.

Obviously, this feedback from individuals plays an important role in customer service and reputation management, and all of this data provides a rich source of information about the business, the market, and the customers.

Reviews and social media activity play a more important role in search visibility

Whether or not you can get business from the Internet often depends on whether your company is easy to find. Travelers plan their destinations based on where you are, so are you visible to them?

For many customers, search engines are the first step in their travel planning process. Google’s research found that every travel transaction is preceded by 2.5 hours of research and dozens of search queries.

That was true for a while. But now there’s a new twist: social activity is influencing search rankings and content.

Building visibility and authority on social networks not only benefits your website, but also helps with search result rankings.

While many in the search marketing industry had seen this coming before, last year we saw clearly the impact that social media is having on search engine rankings.

Bing integrates Facebook data to personalize search results based on a person's social network (such as links or content that friends have "liked"). If a user's friends on Facebook have not shared any content about a certain search keyword, Bing will prioritize content that most users in the Facebook community are following.

While Google has been experimenting with social network searches for some time, this week it rolled out a new way to include content from the social web -- starting with showing Google Plus content in search results.

In detailing the change, Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand called it the “most radical change” to Google’s algorithm. At TechCrunch, Jason Kincaid explains why even bigger changes are coming:

"That may not sound like a big deal, but it's a harbinger of a huge opportunity that's about to emerge: Google will increasingly become the search engine for everything you do."

"The key is that Google is getting better and better at integrating data around social. They're not just focusing on what your friends are sharing, but because it's actually useful."

As a result, search targeting and the content that appears on search results pages are changing based on activity on social networks.

What exactly is the reason why search engine visibility is so important?

As mentioned above, online searches play a big role in the travel planning and transaction process. If users can see your website, then every search is a great opportunity to introduce your brand. Here’s some data from Hubspot to emphasize the importance of ranking well in the search results page:
• The top three search results account for 79% of all click-throughs
• Only 3% of searchers click beyond the first page of results

Obviously, your position in the results page is disproportionate to the amount of traffic you get to your site. If your site is not near the top of the first page of search results, it is virtually invisible to potential customers.

The key here is to invest in building your social media presence and accumulating more online user reviews to improve your rankings and gain more website traffic.

Encourage customers to leave reviews about you on Google Places or other review sites they participate in. Also, make it easy for people to share content about your hotel on social networks.

From Google Plus to Pinterest, people are looking for content to post — so make that process easier.

In the next and final article in this series, we’ll explore bigger ideas about international marketing, location services, brand building, and more.

Part 1: The best opportunities for hotels to use social media in 2012 (Part 1)

via: traveldaily