The overarching impact of guest feedback technology

Guest feedback can often feel like the end-point of a guest’s journey, the culmination of an experience. But it doesn’t have to be, and in fact shouldn’t be, an ending. It can be a starting point for actively marketing, optimising operations, and enhancing experiences at your property. The right guest feedback tech can help you accomplish all three. Market your property with social proof People trust people, not brands. A hotel can pay top money for advertising, but no billboard or TV commercial will be trusted more than a review from a real guest. It’s a phenomenon known as social proof, where hearing about other people’s positive experiences will make potential guests, want to have that experience themselves. That’s why keeping track of and making the most of your online feedback is vital in this day and age. Reviews are the new word of mouth, and guest feedback technology like GuestRevu makes it easy to keep track of what people are saying about your property by collating feedback from review sites and bringing them into one platform for you to read and manage. “We're a very customer-centric business. People are central to everything we do... So without an ability to measure and respond to guest feedback, we wouldn't be able to evolve as a brand.” — Dina Soliman, Queensway Group, UK. Knowing what guests think of your property is only the first step, however. Feedback technology can help you to analyse both direct and online reviews to pinpoint where your strengths and weaknesses lie. This can help you refine your marketing messaging to potential guests, encourage direct bookings and inspire previous guests to return, while also helping you to define and maintain your competitive edge. A TripAdvisor Platinum Partner like GuestRevu can also see you actively encouraging guests to post reviews directly from your feedback surveys. By doing so, you become an active participant in your online reputation management, rather than a bystander. This shows past and potential guests that you truly value feedback, and genuinely care about your guest experience, in turn generating future social proof for your property. “Having TripAdvisor integrated is a huge plus side for us. It channels guests to post their reviews on our page that maybe, without GuestRevu, they would have never been inclined to do, posting a review on TripAdvisor at the end of the GuestRevu questionnaire completes the loop.” — Tarek Aboudib, Sandy Beach Hotel & Resort, UAE Optimise your operations with actionable, real-time insights Keeping a handle on everything at your hotel is no easy feat, but feedback technology can help you to pre-empt negative feedback; monitor, manage and delegate tasks; and motivate staff, streamlining the guest experience from check-in to check-out, and beyond. No property is perfect, and even the best have bad days. Knowing when those bad days happen can help you to keep resolution of issues in-house, and prevent them from becoming online rants. Technology can make it easy for your guests to provide feedback when and how it’s most convenient for them. That could be via guest surveys sent after checkout via email, conveniently placed tablets that collect feedback in real-time, or scannable QR codes displayed in rooms, on receipts or at reservation desks. Each of these methods gives guests a direct line for communication which often results in their no longer feeling the need to air their grievances online. “For us it is absolutely vital that we can quickly identify patterns where areas may be declining in standard. Guests are very good at reporting minor maintenance issues which is very helpful to prevent snags becoming major (costly issues).” — Craig Webb, Cotswold House Hotel & Spa, UK Feedback tech can also ease the burden of task management and delegation by allowing reviews to be converted to actionable tasks or ‘service tickets’, which can be assigned to team members and monitored by management to make your life that little bit easier. This can ensure that one person’s minor inconvenience can be resolved before it becomes another guest’s final straw. Highlighting the impact that teams make on guest experience can also be a motivational tool when it comes to your feedback. Technology can assist by providing guests with the opportunity to identify individual staff members that contributed towards their experience. Analysing feedback can also highlight areas or departments in which staff are going above and beyond, or where further training may be needed. Enhance your offering by understanding what matters most to guests Analysing guest experience trends through feedback technology can not only show you where your strengths and weaknesses lie, but can help you to make operational decisions on an individual property or at group level. Direct feedback surveys with smart logic prompt unhappy guests to give specific details on where improvements need to be made. This provides data-driven insights which allow management to analyse return on investments, allocate resources and more. “It’s a business intelligence tool that facilitates you in making the right decision for your business. Without information, you’re hamstrung in terms of making intelligent decisions around your business... If you have an intelligence platform that’s telling you that 65-70% of your guests are saying that you need to spend money, you need that information so that you can make that informed decision.” — David Campbell, The Coaching Inn Group, UK. Feedback technology also provides an opportunity for benchmarking yourself against your competitors. By analysing key ratings, properties are able to see how they compare in areas such as value for money, cleanliness and sleep quality. This will help to optimise room prices and offerings, and pinpoint unique selling points. Groups can also use this to ensure brand standards are maintained across all properties. With the right technology, listening to guests and learning from their insights has the potential to not only earn loyalty and custom, but to improve experiences for future guests and maximise your ROI. That’s why, at GuestRevu, our slogan of ‘Listen. Learn. Earn.’ is more than just a motto. It’s a promise. About GuestRevu: GuestRevu helps hospitality professionals to listen to, learn from and earn from their guests by enabling them to leverage the power of their guest data to build lasting loyalty and drive revenue. GuestRevu’s mission is to give hospitality professionals award-winning tools that they can use every day to develop a guest-centric culture, optimise their guest experience, the running of their business and, ultimately, to drive revenue using online surveys and reputation management. GuestRevu offers local support in South Africa and the UK, and is a TripAdvisor Platinum Review Collection Partner. www.guestrevu.com For more information please contact: Mark Evans, Business Development Manager, GuestRevu mark@guestrevu.com +44 (0) 800 133 7023