2 posts tagged “hotrec”

10 principles proposed by the hotel industry relating to hotel review/traveller opinions sites

1.            Editorial control

Guest reviews will only be published after verification by a qualified editorial staff of the authenticity, straightforwardness and reliability of the entry.

2.            Prevention of manipulations

2.1   The site providers have to ensure that reviews of a hotel be provided only by guests actually having stayed at this hotel.

2.2   Ratings should not be based on an arithmetic average but rather on the statistical median. An alternative solution is to exclude the best and worst 10 % of evaluations from the calculation.

3.            Quality insurance

3.1         Reviews should only refer to the hotel facilities that are actually offered by the hotel. For example, an evaluation of the gastronomic “performance” of a hotel offering breakfast only (“hotel garni”) should not influence the rating of this hotel.

3.2         The hotel guest must be invited to comment exclusively upon the services and offers he actually took advantage of during his stay at the hotel. For example if a guest did not use the spa facilities or the gastronomic restaurant of a hotel, he should restrain from posting a review of these hotel facilities.

3.3         Review sites must provide the user with evaluation criteria, which are

·         Relevant

·         With appropriate levels of detail

·         And commensurate with the characteristics of the hotel.

3.4         The user should be given the opportunity to express the evaluation not only via ratings but also via “open” texts.

4.            No anonymous reviews

In principle, reviews should not be anonymous: the hotelier should have the possibility to react.

5.            Guaranteed minimum number of reviews

5.1   Sites should only make reviews available, when the number of reviews for a specific hotel matches as a minimum the number of its rooms.

5.2       In order to avoid a “chicken-and-egg problem” during the construction phase    of a review site, its provider has to pay particular care in supervising the individual reviews as long as the critical number is not reached.

6.     Harmonisation of rating scales

In order to improve their reliability and comparability, hotel review sites should aim at harmonizing their rating scales, e.g. ascending from 1 to 10. Under no circumstances should star symbols be used, so as to avoid any confusion with official hotel classifications.

7.    Right of reply

In case of a negative review, the sites have to offer automatically, via for instance an email “alert” system, the possibility to react to the hotelier concerned. Such a procedure will allow the hotel to verify and manage guest complaints actively and on-time. When available, use should also be made of the official ombudspersons for the hotel industry and their mediation services.

8.    Legal certainty

Reviews must be truthful and based on the personal experiences of their authors. Hoteliers have a legal right to     protection against defamatory criticisms and untruthful declarations. False factual statements have to be            removed from the sites in a quick and non-bureaucratic manner.

9.    Up-to-date data

Sites should only propose current reviews. After maximum two years, reviews should be automatically deleted.

10.  Indication of the official star classification

In order to increase transparency for the guests, hotel review sites should provide information about the official star classifications of hotels in accordance with the system in place in the country(ies) concerned, including a link to the applicable classification criteria . Review sites should regularly check the stars levels of establishments together with the competent classification authorities.

El tema de los famosos “Product Reviews” o evaluación de productos,  está cogiendo cada vez más importancia a medida que la evolución de la web está cogiendo más fuerza y el usuario es consciente de la utilidad de conocer previamente experiencias de otros usuarios y aunque volvemos a lo de siempre esto no es nuevo, simplemente la red nos permite más organización, difusión y movimiento de esos comentarios.

El otro día no se donde encontré un listado de datos de diferentes estudios realizados por varias consultoras de nombre y lo copie a un word, os detallo algunos datos:

·          Según Júpiter Research el 77 % de los compradores online utilizan las evaluaciones antes de comprar

·          Las evaluaciones incrementan en un 21 % la satisfacción de las compras y un 18 % la fidelidad de clientes según Foresee

·          En un estudio realizado por eTaling Group en 2000 compradores, el 92 % remarcó como “extremadamente útil” o “muy útil” el hecho de tener la posibilidad de consultar evaluaciones durante sus compras

·          Bizrate detecto que el 59 % de los usuarios considera que los comentarios de los usuarios son más valorados que los comentarios de los expertos

·          Un estudio de CompUSA-iperceptions comenta que el 63 % de los consumidores indican que prefieren comprar desde una web que tiene comentarios de otros compradores

·          Según MarketingSherpa el 86.9 % de los encuestrados se fian más de las recomendaciones de los amigos que de las que realizan los críticos o expertos. Y el 83.8 % prefieren los comentarios de otros usuarios frente a los de los expertos

Como veis el tema está claro, yo veo dos cosas bien claras:

·          Este será un tema que cada vez más cogerá importancia y la tendencia es la intención por parte del sector al “intento de influencia en algún tipo de regularización”, otra cosa es que se puedan poner puertas al campo. Os puedo adelantar que este tema lo tocaremos en Fiturtech 2.0 desde todos los puntos de vista.

·          Y que el sector debe aprender a utilizar este tipo de herramientas para que pueda él evaluar los productos que utiliza, es decir que por ejemplo se pueda saber si la cafetera modelo x es buena o no buena para su hotel

En un próximo post os pongo el decálogo que ha creado HOTREC para regular los comentarios de clientes en webs como tripadvidor.