Suite Dreams or Motel Hell: Consumers Decide

By Imperial Hotel Management College -


New Ideas
Suite Dreams or Motel Hell: Consumers Decide

At this point, consumers are used to seeing reviews for books and other items on Amazon.com, but have to rely on third parties to find out if a hotel is any good. That could soon change. Choice Hotels International is considering taking a big risk by allowing guests to post written reviews—positive or negative—on its Web sites. Hilton has confirmed it is considering the same route as well.

The concept would be tested first during the first quarter, said Mary Beth Knight, svp-e-commerce and worldwide distribution. Choice operates 10 hospitality brands including Comfort Inn, Clarion, Cambria Suites and Econo Lodge.

"We know there are situations where some of the reviews posted are not from actual guests," said Knight, referring to posting from competitors and brand assassins. "We want to do postings in a way where the review is from someone who actually stayed in one of our hotels so the review is fresh, within hours of the guest checking out." Although guests can trash a hotel with a negative review, jumping into the world of user content has its advantages. Choice Hotel customers are asking for reviews from their peers, so providing such information satisfies a need. Also having a pool of guest reviews is content that Choice can feed to other Web sites which helps the company engage in the online discussion already occurring about its properties. This could improve its search engine marketing rankings by generating more links to its branded URLs. Currently, individual hotel properties from chains like Marriott, Best Western and independents post consumer reviews from TripAdvisor.com on their own Web sites. The effort also comes as 60% of online shoppers consult online peer reviews before making a purchase and 41% of travel shoppers do so, per Nielsen/NetRatings.

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