Guest Reviews!!

I’m not going to explain why guest reviews are so important / critical in a world of always on mobile connectivity. That’s been covered in a gazillion places distributed all over the interwebs. There’s plenty of research out there and you can Google some of it here.

No one else gets reviews like Hospitality does!

I’ve regularly thought about this, and I can’t think of any other industry that get reviews as often and persistently as the Hospitality Industry does. For example, as a Hotel General Manager, you can know about a broken shower in one of your rooms before your Housekeeping department has even started their daily routine. As a restaurant manager you can be alerted to a happy or unhappy guest, before they’ve paid the bill. Reviews come thick and fast, and it’s the biggest gift, if you have the correct attitude and approach.

At their most basic, guest reviews are feedback, and feedback is critical if you want to know how well you’re meeting your guest’s / customer’s / client’s needs? Let’s be honest, if you’re not meeting those needs, you’re not going to be in business for much longer. Businesses that survive into the future will be those that are still relevant to their customer’s needs in the future.

We have and have had a lot of clients in the Hospitality Industry, and while they serve different markets, some definitely do better than others. And while it’s not good science to boil it down to just one element, there is definitely a correlation between success and those who take reviews seriously.

And it’s really quite simple….

Read / React / Reply / Repeat

That’s the magic formula that I tell all our clients. When a review comes in….

1. You read it,
2. you react (make the necessary changes, if any),
3. you reply to the guest, thanking them, and letting them know how you reacted (by replying, you’re letting that guest, and the next guest know that you’re invested enough to take their feedback seriously),
4. and you repeat, for every single piece of feedback you receive.

The majority of our clients agree, and as a business we spend much of my time replying to reviews, and in conversations with clients on how they’re reacting to reviews? When they fail to react properly, reviews in the future continue to highlight the issue, until it’s been handled properly. However when a repeating issue isn’t dealt with, they sometimes enter a downward spiral that has a negative end result.

Whether it’s a particular staff person, a team, paint that’s peeling in a bathroom, a pothole in the driveway, etc, when these are repeatedly highlighted and not dealt with, it spells eventual trouble. The last thing you want are reviews reinforcing that you’re not interested in fixing the things your guests are asking you to fix. As I said earlier, if you’re not relevant to what your guests want and need, you will soon have no business.

I’ve watched business after business, who take reviews seriously, slowly and consistently climb up whatever list they’re measuring themselves on. Whether it’s TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Lekkerslaap, Travel Ground, Google or Facebook. The formula is simple and it works for every single platform. Read / React / Reply / Repeat.

Sadly, I’ve watched other clients do the opposite because they didn’t think guest reviews were important.

#takeahorsetowater

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Some of those brands include: Coca Cola, Unilever, Starbucks, Beam Suntory, Ben & Jerry’s, Verizon, Diageo, Ford, North Face, Honda, Dockers, Levis, Patagonia and many more.

Coca Cola’s official statement includes: “There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media. The Coca-Cola Company will pause paid advertising on all social media platforms globally for at least 30 days. We will take this time to reassess our advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed. We also expect greater accountability and transparency from our social media partners.”

What I’m Most Interested In?

Of course there are multiple angles to what’s going on, and there’s lots to read and learn about in the process. Debating online censorship and the responsibility of these powerful advertising platforms is long overdue.

However, what I’m most interested in is what impact will this have on the sales of these Brands? Digital Advertising was one of those things that arrived and everyone jumped on board. The hype around the benefits of digital advertising is massive and there are entire industries that strongly support that message.

Well, we’re about to find out what the real impact of digital advertising is? In this case, what the impact of no digital advertising is? For some of these brands, their advertising boycott is only in the US, and for others it’s Global. Assuming they all stop for at least a month, there are going to be some really interesting numbers that emerge. There are also going to be some interesting stories of how these brands re-emerge?

I’m expecting the result will be that digital advertising is key to the revenue of these brands, but this is a rare opportunity to attempt to measure exactly how key it is?

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

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Thorne Travel is an independent travel agency whose customers benefit from over 40 years experience in providing luxury travel and events. Our well travelled consultants are dedicated to optimising out customer’s holiday experiences whilst ensuring exceptional value for money.

They’re a team of 9 agents, who will do their best to satisfy your travel needs. From holidays, to stag nights, to weddings and day trips. They’re almost just another Travel Agent, except they have recently become fairly well known for having the best worst travel advert of all time 🙂

You can watch it below for yourself. Be sure to pay careful attention to the over-sized suit on the Ship’s Captain, and the stunt-person doing the summersault (they’re my personal faves). The story goes that they spent their entire year’s marketing budget on this advert.

Sometimes Luck Can Turn Bad Into Really Good

I’m not sure we (at Calidascope) would ever be able to create something this bad on purpose? I’m certain we’d never ever recommend that any of our clients put their brand on an advert like this. I know Calidascope would never want our brand attached to an advert like this. And yet…

And yet, this advert has rocketed the 9 agents at Thorne Travel to stardom (of sorts) in many parts of the world. Their ad shot to over a million views on YouTube in no time (sadly it seems they’ve removed the video from their profile – I’m sad about that). According to the Independent in the UK, bookings at Thorne have increased by over 110%. Manager, Shona Thorne, has had to cancel her annual leave to meet the sudden demand, and she’s appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain and The Robin Galloway Breakfast Show in Scotland.

Call it what you will, the advert has been a massive success for their business. It’s done what they wanted it to do, and then some. There’s not enough money to purposefully replicate the exposure Thorne just got.

It’s luck. It’s all luck. As a team we’ve even spent some time trying to figure out what the ‘lucky’ elements might have been (if you can work those out, perhaps you can replicate their success)? And while we have some thoughts, there’s no denying that good old fashioned luck was the overwhelming factor of their success.

There are 1000’s of really bad adverts uploaded onto YouTube everyday, but there was only one on this particular day, that luck decided to shine down on 🙂

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