NB: This is a guest article by Margaret Ady, director of marketing at TrustYou.
Whether they love it or loathe it, your guests are talking about you, and it’s not behind your back.
Millions of people every year take to review and social media sites to compliment or complain about their travel experiences.
This is nothing new. Entire businesses are now built around these comments, many hotels have appointed social media managers to handle all such comments; online feedback is here to stay.
What are the most talked about tops and flops? A TrustYou study of more than one million comments worldwide gives the answers.
Top rants by hotel guests in 2012 (followed by the number of mentions)
1. Unprofessional/incompetent service (11785)
2. Small room (8669)
3. Expensive/overpriced (8390)
4. Tasteless, bad breakfast (8243)
5. Bad food (5956)
6. Dirty room (5439)
7. Unfriendly service (5123)
8. Bad bathroom (4600)
9. Bad service (4266)
10. Loud, noisy room (4123)
Top rants raves by hotel guests in 2012 (followed by the number of mentions)
1. Friendly, professional, efficient service (103440)
2. Great, well-situated location (98668)
3. Good room (40191)
4. Great food (42868)
5. Great breakfast (41356)
6. Clean room/hotel (27513)
7. Large room (23867)
8. Good, affordable price (23292)
9. Good bed (11369)
10. Nice view (9147)
What do these lists mean for hotels?
There are two pieces of good news that really stick out. Let’s start there.
Guests are quick to pay a compliment: The number of positive comments far outnumbers the negative.
Great service, for example, has nearly nine times the number of comments as unprofessional or incompetent service.
This is a general trend across hotel reviews—about 81% are positive.
Thus, for hoteliers, encouraging reviews is a must. More reviews mean more positive hotel scores, and therefore more appeal with travelers and more bookings.
Many compliments and complaints are one in the same: Service, food, breakfast, cleanliness (or lack thereof), room size and pricing appear on both lists, suggesting that improving these aspects of a hotel experience will drastically improve a guest’s opinion of his or her stay.
Using rants and raves to improve a guest’s stay and ultimately gain more business.
Win guests over with service
It is no surprise that service shows up on both lists. The biggest turnoff for guests is unsatisfactory service, appearing on the top rant list three times, in a variety of forms: unprofessional/incompetent service (number one spot), unfriendly service (seventh place), and bad service (ninth place).
Please guests by improving your service (common sense, right?). Invest in hiring the right people and training staff. Guests expect staff to be knowledgeable about the hotel and its offerings, about its clientele and their wants/needs and about the area surrounding the hotel. Friendliness and professionalism also goes without saying.
A good meal makes a difference
Breakfast specifically, and food, in general, is memorable and talked about. Appearing on both the rants and the raves list twice (even ahead of a good/comfortable bed), travelers love a good meal.
Guests want new culinary experiences, variety and fresh food when they travel. Impress guests on the culinary front and they are sure to talk.
Deliver on the room expectations you set
The room itself is mentioned three times in the rants list: small room (second place), dirty room (sixth), and loud, noisy room (number ten).
We won’t go in to too much detail on the latter two complaints – let it suffice to say that a hotel room (and the hotel in general) must be clean and should be quiet enough that a guest can get a good night of sleep.
Let’s address the room size. Guests don’t like to feel cramped, but hotels need to maximize their space.
What can be done? Aside from rebuilding all the rooms (not feasible, unless you are going through massive renovations), try reevaluating the room layout.
Is there a different way to arrange the furniture? Is there too much furniture? Is there a different color/paint scheme that would make the room appear bigger? Add mirrors? Channel your inner feng shui expert (or hire one) to take a look.
Internet – a non-issue?
While there is lots of talk surrounding hotel Internet (free vs. charging for it), that did not make the top 10 rant or rave. Is Internet no longer a big deal for guests?
Not exactly. Internet is still important, but paying for it might not be the “deal breaker” that it has often been singled out as.
NB: This is a guest article by Margaret Ady, director of marketing at TrustYou.
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About Special Nodes
I believe there is a “copy/paste error in the sub-head for the raves, which erroneously says, “rants.”
Agreed with previous comment – second section should be “raves.”
Thanks for the catch. I’ve made the fix.
Wow the hotel’s location is not in the list.
Good point!
Thanks for the comment, Minh. Location is an interesting find. It doesn’t break the top 10 complaints, but if we expand the list, it is mentioned twice in the top 20, coming in at number 14 (hard to find, isolated location) and 17 (bad location). Thanks to technology, tools like Google maps, and other guest reviews, my hunch is that location as a complaint drops on the list because it is something that guests can research ahead of time.
Interestingly enough, however, a great location is the second most talked about positive in guest raves. So, a prime location is still an important determining factor for guests and something they talk about!
I would think “small room” in most high-priced/high-exposure markets such as NYC, London, Tokyo etc where the consumer may compare (as I have often heard) to the size of a larger room at for example a Best Western somewhere near an interstate interchange in Missouri.
This should really be teased out for what it is, a room is only small when it is inconvenient/uncomfortable to inhabit.
Furniture that serves no purpose or doesn’t fit, lack of outlets, lamps too big for their table, clutter taking up all the free space, too dark of lighting or lighting that cannot be adjusted, and appliances that don’t work or items like wine opener/bottle opener, etc all hidden in various spots.
One only has to visit the Pod Hotels ideally situated in the heart of Midtown Manhattan or the Jane Hotel in the Village of NYC to see that small, when thoughtful shows the truest form of hospitality.
The lack of thought only reinforces the guests predilection for thinking they are paying too much for not enough.