The onset of Social Media and Web 2.0 technologies has made online reputation management (ORM) important for hotels to stay relevant in their hotel marketing activities.
In the face of countless forums, blogs and other user-generated content (UGC) it can be an overwhelming task for a small hotel marketing team to manage a hotel’s reputation but unfortunately, it is a necessary evil. According to the OTX – “The Traveler’s Road to Decision” study done on behalf of Google, 41% of people surveyed make leisure travel plans and 50% make business travel plans according to the reviews they read. Here are five steps in managing your hotel’s online reputation.
Monitor: It is important to monitor what is being said about your hotel in cyberspace. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is to create Google Alerts for your hotel – this will send you updates on content published online mentioning your hotel – knowing about what is being said about you is the first step in online reputation management. Other more albeit expensive ways to monitor your online reputation is to use ORM tools or even hire a public relations agency depending on the size of your hotel and budget.
Respond: Social media networking sites promote transparency, honesty and give you an opportunity to build trust with your hotel customers. Hence, it should be an important part of your hotel marketing strategy. When positive and/or negative feedback is posted on the Web, it is important to respond quickly and proactively when appropriate. Where inaccurate information has been posted, ask the blog owner to remove the offending blog post or comment, or ask if you can write a guest post in response, or at the least, respond in the comments section to state your case.
Influence: Not only should you respond to reviews, comments and blog posts published about your hotel on the Web when appropriate, you should also try and positively influence public opinion about your hotel by:
- participating in the conversation
- publishing guest posts on hotel related websites
- becoming a regular contributor to blogs and
- contributing to forums in your industry.
By taking an active part in your industry conversation, you are positioning your hotel marketing team as industry experts and showing you’re a leader rather than a follower in the hotel industry.
Control: The same brand message should be communicated by your hotel internet marketing team across all your social media networking sites and platforms. You should have internal policies in place regarding what employees are allowed to discuss about your hotel. This role should also be centralised and the responsibility of assigned representatives at the hotel to post on social media networking sites, answer all enquiries and respond to feedback. This role (depending on how large your hotel is) should be done by the owner/operator, an internal hotel marketing team or external public relations team.
Analyse: Once you have this information on hand, you have to analyse and understand what it is being said about your hotel. It is normal to have some negative comments, but the percentage of these should remain low. If you find that there is consistent negative feedback about your customer service levels and hotel facilities, your hotel marketing team must investigate this further and use this information to improve the quality of your hotel. If the hotel is found to be in error, it is important to show the hotel is responsive to feedback and explain what has been done to rectify the problem.
Social media has brought further implications for online marketing campaigns, and monitoring your hotel reputation is very important with social media sites, websites and blogs having a huge influence on consumer’s decisions on hotel room bookings. Contact us if you need help with your online hotel marketing campaigns and we will show you how you can monitor your online reputation with a few well thought out online reputation management strategies.
