We at HeBS are often asked about the pros and cons of:
1. Creating a link on the hotel website to the customer reviews page of the hotel on TripAdvisor
2. Displaying TripAdvisor reviews directly on the hotel website via the TripAdvisor Review Widget
We have always recommended against both of these options. Here is why:
1. Creating a link on the hotel website to the customer reviews page of the hotel on TripAdvisor
This is a much simpler case. Have you looked at your property page and your customer reviews on TripAdvisor lately? Have you noticed that the page is full of advertisements by all the major online travel agencies (OTAs), all the major hotel brands, and many of your competitors?
By linking from your hotel website to TripAdvisor you are actively encouraging your potential customers to book with the OTAs or someone else. On the other hand, it is extremely expensive nowadays to bring visitors to your website (costs related to paid search, website development, SEO, hosting, email marketing, analytics, etc.), and you would not want to lose them that easily by sending them away.
2. Displaying TripAdvisor reviews directly on the hotel website via the TripAdvisor Review Widget
The TripAdvisor Review Widget is placed on the hotel website by uploading a special TripAdvisor code that “pushes” live customer reviews from TripAdvisor.
TripAdvisor promotes this as a ‘friendlier’ option compared to Option 1 above because the hotel website visitors do not have to leave the site, and therefore will not be exposed to advertising by the OTAs and competitors.
Here are the cons as we see them:
Official vs. Unofficial Web Content
• With social media becoming the “voice of the people” online travelers want to see both sides of the story:
o The “Official Content”: this is the hotel website’s descriptions of the hotel product and services
o The “Unofficial Content”: these are customer reviews and postings on social media sites, TripAdvisor, etc.
Mixing official and unofficial content by adding the TripAdvisor Widget on the hotel website goes against the very principle of separating official from unofficial content, convolutes the mere nature of social media content, creates confusion among online travelers and ultimately works against the hotel.
• Lack of Control over Customer Reviews
No hotel will ever publish a negative customer review on its website. Having TripAdvisor push live customer reviews to the hotel website creates the very real threat that negative reviews will appear on the hotel website as soon as they are posted on TripAdvisor. How do you control that? There is no way that you can filter out negative reviews with this TripAdvisor Review Widget.
• A Guest Satisfaction Survey should already exist on the hotel website
As per best practices, the hotel website should already feature a Guest Testimonials Page, as well as a Guest Satisfaction Survey, which aims to solicit customer opinions about hotel services, accommodations, etc. See a sample here: http://www.leparcsuites.com/hotel/guest-survey.php
• Don’t Tempt the Competition
We have noticed that when the competition discovers that you feature “live” customer reviews from TripAdvisor on your website, they are often tempted to write a fake negative review about your hotel themselves.
• Best Practices:
TripAdvisor created this functionality to link from the hotel website back in early 2008. As of today only a few hundred hotels have signed up (out of over 50,000 U.S. hotels). No major hotel brand has allowed its franchisees to link to TripAdvisor from their own websites, and no chain website links to TripAdvisor. Why? The reasons sited above, as well as a very practical one:
the industry in general should not contribute to the expansion of monopolistic customer review depositories like TripAdvisor. This site already has more than 30 million unique visitors every month. It already has a big chunk of the marketplace. Its closest competitor has only 5 million visitors a month.
Our clients agree with us:
Here is what one of our clients, a luxury boutique hotel in California, had to say:
“I agree that the TripAdvisor Review Widget works against the hotel, particularly since in this economy we’ve been forced to play in the opaque sites (Priceline, Hotwire), we’ve found those customers posting reviews that are either only partial truth, at best, and/or certainly embellished, showing the hotel in a very negative light”.
What do you think about displaying TripAdvisor reviews directly on the hotel website via the TripAdvisor Review Widget—is this a good idea or not?
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Hey, thanks for this!
Right now potential customers will give you credit for being open and honest with them. In the not too distant future if a business is not seen to be open and honest it will reflect badly on them. Many businesses seem to be self-destructively attached to the illusion of absolute control over information about the business, their marketing message. Embrace change or become a casualty of it.
The web is like an archive of information. Whether it’s a corporate website or merely a blog, a search box is essential. The visitor might be looking for something that is hidden within the website, with the search box, chances are, visitors will get what they want.
Having read this article, I must say I’m rather confused. While the example of the tripadvisor widget might be likened to advertising your competitors hotel on your own site, some of the principles and reasons seem dated to me.
No longer can a hotel launch an expensive website telling people how good they are. People are no longer fooled by the marketing BS of yesteryear. Nearly all people booking hotels these days will do a search on tripadvisor or other social site to get the truth from others, so burying your head in the sand and hoping that this social media malarkey will blow over is only being naive
“No hotel will ever publish a negative customer review on its website”
Only the foolish would refuse to post negative reviews. This is basic psychology! Look at Amazon for the proof. If you have a product with 100 reviews and all of them are positive and you have another with 100 reviews and 95 are positive, which do you buy? The answer is the one with 95 positive reviews, because it is believable.
It only takes one negative review to solidify the validity of all the positive reviews.
Mark
Hoteliers who want to keep visitors on their own website shouldn’t link to competing websites – agreed – but vetting reviews and avoiding publishing anything negative on your own website is absurd – as almost all the comments above have already pointed out.
Allow the guests to post their reviews on the hotel website, and do not edit or vet them. Respond to both positive and negative reviews to demonstrate that you are listening to your guests, and try your best to resolve their complaints. Refunding a guest who has posted a negative review, or offering them a complementary booking, can turn a negative review back into a positive one, and shows prospective guests that the hotelier is fair, open and honest. Hiding the negative reviews and hoping that that they are not found elsewhere is just daft – people who are complaining that are ignored on the hotels website will go elsewhere to share their opinion, and it will only be more vitriolic if they feel the hotel tried to dupe them into “sharing” an opinion that was then censored or deleted.
Remember that people with a complaint are ten times more likely to make their opinions heard than satisfied customers. Don’t pour fuel on the flames by gagging them.