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Hotel Reputation
Hotel Reputations Across Europe
November 12, 2009 | 
Author A recent survey of hotels across Europe by travel comparison engine suggests a correlation between high hotel prices and low reputation; cities where the average price for a standard double room is very high, appear at the bottom of the Reputation Ranking. Why?
It suggests that consumers are finding hotels are high priced, or put in marketing speak, the value proposition is wrong so that they are dissatisfied by the experience that they have paid for. Low priced hotels satisfy consumers, not because they are better, but because they seem worth the price.
All UK cities perform poorly with Edinburgh hotels at the top of the list at 29th and London near the bottom. UK hotel prices are uniformly high.
Hotel reputation management face a number of challenges:
- monitoring and responding to hotel review sites like Trivago and Tripadvisor
- working more closely with travel guide authors who are key in the decision process of travel planners
- creating change within the hotel to address failings that are being criticised.
- Working to improve the hotel’s internet position and prominence.
Many hotels are already struggling with SEO activity but the visibility of review sites when customers search for individual hotels means that reputation management has to encompass both traditional search engines like Google as well as Web 2.0 tools like hotel review sites.
Google at last talks about reputation management
At last google has talked about the importance of reputation management on their blog Google’s stance on negative results appearing in their search results has always been it’s not there responsibility to remove the site from their search results. Their take on it is that the business or person effected needs to contact the website owner and ask them to remove it from their site.
“If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either. Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business. If you can get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of harm that that negative or embarrassing content can do to your reputation.”
The biggest issue for reputation management is people not even knowing what to search for to get help. I have asked many business owners / people if they have heard or know what reputation management is, and to date I have not had anyone heard of it. It was the same with SEO 10 years ago, no one knew what search engine optimisation was or involved. By google acknowledging this industry helps make people aware that there are companies like www.reputationmanagementfor.com who can help remove negative results in the search engines.
So lets continue to educate people and make them aware of the service reputation management companies can offer. Businesses know they need it, you only need to see site like TripAdvisor, RipOffReport, Scam.com to name a few sites that can often appear right below a companies main website. Up to 70% of people click on a negative search result if its directly below the company website. How many times have you checked tripadvisor before you book a hotel room?
If you are a business and have negative reults damageing your online reputation then search google for Reputation Management to find a company who can help remove or bury the negative results.
Do the big companies understand online reputation
What’s amazing is how big companies still have no real understanding of reputation management on-line and how it effects them. Here are some examples.
KFC
The Google search shows kentuckyfriedcruelty.com these kinds of search results can effect not only business reputation with customers but also shareholders.
Apple’s Iphones
This result is number 4 in Google could certainly put people off buying the Iphones. The issue with negative results showing for your product is you never know how much it’s hurting and costing the comapny.
negative content results about iphones
Holiday Inn New York
Many hotels around the world suffer from sites like tripadvisor which normally have way more negative comments than positive ones.
Holiday Inn Hotel Reputation Online
So these are just a few quick examples of household brands who have not fully understood the need for managing the content on the first page results of search engines. It’s no easy task and requires commitment from the company as well as the online reputation company. Some industries naturally have a tougher job than others, take hotels for example, because of the nature of the industry they encourage 3 rd party websites to have content on them so they can make commission of bookings. These 3rd party sites learnt very early on that customer feedback creates lots of fresh original content. The problem created by this approach of course is more often than not people will write remarks when they have had a bad experience rather than a good one, so more often than not the content is normally negative rather than positive.
So how do you protect your brand and company reputation?
There is no quick solution to this, it’s really about creating good quality content and keeping on top of the social network sites. When we are creating content we put it into categories:
- Top quality – this content is written for the main website and any press releases.
- Middle quality – this content maybe out sourced and used for social net work sites and micro sites.
- Lesser quality – this is used to fill the Internet with positive stories and helps push and support the top quality content.
Although we offer SEO services much of our work is creating positive content for clients and managing the whole online presence. It is an ongoing battle making sure you keep on top of the online world, 1 or 2 articles a week just won’t do it if you have a global brand and you are going against 1000′s of people writing about you.
Join hands with us and pep up your hotel business
Bogged down by the bad press your hotel gets online? It sure is a challenge to stay abreast of all those nasty comments written about you. Prospective customers are heavily dependent on online information as it is just a click away. And chances are they gulp down every inane written online. A stray comment here and there can make or break business So the bad news is that negative publicity about your hotel can make it online very easily and dampen your sales. And the good news is that we can help monitor and eliminate it.
Give your business a short in the arm with our reputation management service. There is a steady flow of information on the web. Any lay man can create a blog and step into the shoes of a journalist and air his views. There are also a horde of travel websites and travel agencies that invite comments from customers. Where an even tempered customer may just turn up his nose, a cranky customer may put up some ridiculous comments. When you are facing cut-throat competition, stepping up measures to curtail negative publicity will keep you in good stead.
The first step towards curbing negative publicity is knowing what is written about you, where it appears and when. We will set up a review tracking system and monitor all content written about you. We will also track information on your rival hotels and this will give you a better idea of the current scenario. We know that prevention is better than cure , so we use a proactive approach rather than a reactive one.
Posted in Company Reputation, Hotel Reputation | 
Tags: Bad Press, Hotels, Reputation Management | 
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