Mr. MacKenzie

Social Media & PR

What Makes Travelers Angry, and How to Prevent It

By Josiah MacKenzie, Founder, Gradigio Group

Have you ever wondered what causes a guest to leave a negative online review about one of your hotels? Are these people just trying to get revenge, or do they have another motivation?

For the hotel manager that works around the clock to make guests happy, a negative online review can be disappointing. What if you could anticipate exactly what causes negative online reviews, and how this affects your reputation? As an analyst for ReviewPro, I have access to one of the world’s largest databases of online customer opinion, looking over 90 million pieces of guest feedback related to hotels. Common themes have emerged that provide insight into why someone leaves a negative review online.

A range of emotions lead to negative online reviews

In an article for Online Reputation Edge, Brett Borders identified eight emotions expressed in online reviews seem to reflect a range of personality types:

1. Sadism – they just enjoy hurting others
2. Revenge – “two wrongs make a right”
3. Sabotage – attacking you to make their product look better
4. Extortion – trying to collect compensation
5. Compassion – preventing other customers from going through the same experience
6. Chiming in – want to write about their own experience
7. Confusion – they misunderstood what you offer
8. Desperation – they could not get resolution elsewhere

Understanding these motivations is the first step in preventing negative online feedback. Once you know the emotions that trigger unfavorable reviews, it is possible to proactively address each scenario. The last motivation on the list – frustration because of desperation – is perhaps one of the most common.

“Double deviations” cause negative reviews

While the range of personality types is to be expected, perhaps the biggest breakthrough in understanding what makes travelers angry enough to leave a negative online review comes from research by Canadian academics Thomas Tripp and Yany Gregoire. In their MIT Sloan Management Review article “When Unhappy Customers Strike Back on the Internet,” Tripp and Gregoire explain the concept of “double deviations.”

“Most online complainers have been victims not only of a product or service failure, but also of a series of failed resolution attempts….Our research shows that online public complaining is almost always preceded by [these] double deviations. Specifically, after analyzing 431 online complaints posted to ripoffreport.com and consumeraffairs.com, we found that approximately 96% of the online complaints followed a double deviation. Only 4% of the online complaints posted publicly followed a simple service failure.”

In the hotel industry, an example of these “double deviations” might be the air conditioning unit in the room being broken (a product failure), and then the staff doing nothing to remedy the situation (a service failure). This is the leading cause of negative reviews online. The positive takeaway here is that through delivering excellent service, your staff probably has the chance to resolve an issue before it gets shared with the world in the form of a review.

Optimizing reviews with real-time monitoring and service

The opportunity for hotel managers lies in using real-time digital channels to catch complaints and fix the issue before it leads to a negative online review. For example, if someone tweets out a complaint about their room or the food at a restaurant, monitoring sites like Twitter provide the ability to catch the complaint in real time and resolve the situation before the guest leaves.

To assist you with this, use tools that monitor a wide range of social media platforms, and deliver insights quickly. Monitoring just one or two networks is no longer enough. There are dozens of channels that consumers can go to share their thoughts and opinions. Speed of data collection is essential, as the value of a tweet expires quickly after a few hours. A response that comes a day or week later is typically worth much less. Real-time responses give some power back into the hands of hoteliers. Instead of social media being a passive or reactionary platform, the ability to proactively manage your online reputation is there.

And of course, the practice of catching issues before a guest leaves and writes a negative review should not be limited to the web. Apex Hotels in the UK, for example, places a strong emphasis on building very approachable guest services team. During the check in process, guests are encouraged to contact these people for any help needed during their stay. Providing clear channels for communication – both online and off - reduces the number of situations that may lead to a negative review.

Preventing negative reviews through systems for consistent improvement

Listening is a start, but worth little unless the insights gained by listening are turned into action. Avoid making the same mistakes twice by designing systems for consistent improvement. Perfection may be constantly moving target, but there needs to be coordinated effort to continually make changes based on online guest feedback.

Build workflow systems that take into account the online feedback landscape today. Have a tool in place that allows your social media manager to pass along insights and action steps to others in your organization. Feedback - both positive and negative - should be shared with the team. Workflow systems should track progress on an issue until it is completed.

Remember, for every person that leaves you a negative comment online, there are likely to be 10 others that may not post their thoughts online, but will tell friends about the experience.

Different feedback, different channels

Some hotels ask all guests to share their experience online. Others try to understand the most appropriate way to deal with feedback before making that request. Asking about a guest’s stay during check-out gives the option to bring in a hotel manager to resolve an issue on the spot if something went wrong. Additionally, you can have them share opportunities for improvement on an internal survey to be reviewed by your quality manager.

Some hotels I talk with view online reviews and internal customer satisfaction surveys as two different forms of feedback that are not redundant. Online reviews act as a “24/7 mystery shopper” that allows guests to say anything about your hotel in any way they want. The feedback is unstructured and open-ended. This is useful for identifying issues that require further investigation. Once this happens, the managers can create a followup survey to collect detailed feedback on that issue in a structured format.

But if everything went well with the guest’s stay, the front desk staff should go ahead and encourage sharing the experience online. Positive online reviews have a direct impact on revenue for hotels, making this a very important activity.

Research shows most reviews are positive

This article focused on what makes travelers angry. The perception of some hoteliers is that the majority of online reviews are negative, but our data shows this is not the case. Recent research conducted by the ReviewPro data team across the more than 90 million online hotel reviews in 65 different review sources showed the review breakdown as follows:

• 60% are positive,
• 28% neutral,
• and only 12% negative

For hotel executives, this should provide a glimpse of the opportunity that lies in this space. Understanding the specifics of what makes travelers angry helps you design processes that can prevent negative online reviews. While there are a range of personality types represented in social media, the common thread is the double deviation of a product failure coupled with a service failure. Avoid negative reviews by having systems in place to catch these issues before they impact your online reputation.

Josiah MacKenzie is the founding owner and marketing brain of the Gradigio Group, a San Francisco-based collection of media properties catering to the hospitality industry around the globe. He also has roles in other ventures, with business interests in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and Australia. Mr. Mackenzie has published over 100 articles, and has appeared in the Washington Post, MSNBC.com, and Entrepreneur magazine. His new book, The Savvy Hotelier's Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas, reveals over 1,000 of the most profitable marketing tactics used by hotels. Mr. MacKenzie can be contacted at 415-671-6235 or josiah@gradigio.com Extended Bio...

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