I mentioned in my last post that I had a story about reputation management. This one is a story about 2 hotels. One charges a lot less than the other, but learns that price is not the only thing people want.

Today you hear a lot about reputation montioring as a service, but I want to stress that there’s a little more to it. You need to act on the things that impact your business’ perception online. So, let’s start our story.

My friend is going to Miami with her family and invited her friend to come along with her family as well. Sounds like fun, no? My friend is busy, so she asks her friend to find a suitable hotel. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it needs a decent location, and appropriate accommodations for the 2 large groups.

Within a few hours, my friend receives an email with a link to a hotel that her friend found. The location wasn’t bad, the rooms looked OK, and the price was $125 a night. Not bad in Miami. Thought my friend is pleased with this hotel, she wants to make certain there are no surprises, so she digs a little. This is where things get interesting.

My friend heads over to Trip Advisor to check on the hotel’s recent reviews. After all, who better to ask about a hotel than the previous visitors? What does she find? Multiple negative reviews on the hotel. The thing is, they are all about the exact same thing. How slow the elevator is. Everyone is complaining about the long wait times to get from the lobby to their floor, and vice versa. At first, my friend thinks nothing of it. But then she thinks

«What if we are all meeting in the lobby? One family will be waiting on the other for sure. What if we are out and I need to return to the room? That could be a long trip for just a little need. This whole thing could be very inconvenient.»

My friend then looks around Trip Advisor (why not? She’s already there) to find another hotel in the same general area, with fewer negative reviews. Very quickly she finds one. Actually, she finds a suite. This would be great for the long vacation these 2 families are planning. Needless to say they ended up staying there. Not only did they not stay at the original hotel, they ended up staying at a suite that charges twice as much as the hotel. So, where did the first hotel in our story go wrong?

Listen
The first mistake our hotel made was the same one many companies make on an almost constant basis. They neglected to listen to their customers. It’s my experience that the hotel doesn’t even know that there is a problem (this is all speculation as I have not contacted said hotel). If you want to provide a service or product that’s going to grow, you need to listen to what your customers want. You can’t give it to them if you don’t even know what it is.

Fix The Heart Of The Problem
From just my friend’s family alone, our hotel missed out on a week’s worth of paying visitors. Add to that her friend’s family, the games that their kids will certainly be purchasing and any other frills a hotel may provide in such an area. How many other people are reading the same reviews on TripAdvisor, and how many people are being advised by word of mouth by the people that left those reviews? «A lot» is the correct answer.

Now, I’m no elevator expert, but I visit a building here in Jacksonville 2 times a week that makes use of those designated elevators. You know the ones. An elevator for floors 1 — 10, another for 11 — 20, and so on. This allows for each elevator to reach it’s destination, and return to pick up more riders more efficiently. How difficult or costly would it be to employ the same thing at our hotel? I wonder if it would pay for itself within a year of visitors.

Respond
The next thing our hotel needs to do is respond. All those negative comments and reviews, and not a single response from the hotel. Even a simple

«we are very sorry to hear about the inconveniences, and appreciate everyone’s comments here. We are happy that you have all spoken up so that we may better our property. We will be working diligently to make your stays much more enjoyable in the future.»

Or something like that. The point is, don’t just let those comments fester and influence more people without making your side heard as well. This will not only show that you care and are willing to accommodate, but it will help to move the negative comments from the first page, to the second.

Brute Force
If this had been a case of negative remarks showing up for a certain search term within the search engines, then you may be able to push those pages down in the rankings with the help of Jeff Quip’s idea. I haven’t done this myself, but it might be worth a shot.

So what have we learned from this hotel?

I hope this gives you some ideas about why we need to monitor and manage our online reputation. I like this subject. I’m certainly far from an expert in this area, but I’ll be sharing some methods for monitoring in future posts, so stay tuned, and let me know if you have any questions.

With this, and any other post, please read the disclaimer.

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