Ms. Wohl

Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt

Why User Generated Content is The Great Equalizer in Hotel Marketing

By Michelle Wohl, VP of Marketing & Client Services, Revinate

The rise of user-generated content is one of the most disruptive forces in hospitality since hotels moved their marketing materials and booking engines to the Web. Why? User-generated content is the great equalizer of marketing. It allows consumers, not brands or properties, to own the reputation of a hotel. It allows boutique hotels with small marketing budgets to compete against large chain hotels with lavish loyalty programs. It allows great service and quality to drive marketing through consumer reviews.

When I was a marketing director for a consumer products company in the '90s, our website was the most important part of our marketing mix. We spent hours agonizing over wording and design, imagining that each pixel could somehow affect our brand. It was the primary way we spoke to our customers. In addition to telling customers who we were and what we did, the website needed to reflect our corporate values and our personality. And of course it needed to drive sales.

Today, there are infinitely more ways for a company to reach customers online. As the head of marketing at Revinate, my job is to engage with our prospects and clients in communities -- both real and virtual. I tweet regularly with product updates and industry news and provide insight where I can add value. I maintain a dialogue with users on social networks, such as Facebook, forums and industry sites where I am able to comment on stories. In other words, our Web site is just one small way that people learn about the company online. The lion’s share of my efforts are spent in more interactive ways.

In March of 2009, Skittles launched a Web site that got marketers all over the world buzzing. They didn’t introduce a new slogan or a new flavor. Rather, the site was revamped to just be a portal to Skittle’s social networking pages. In effect, they sent the message to consumers that the brand was defined by its customers, not its corporate office. I was very impressed by this controversial move since I do think marketing has changed a lot within the last ten years thanks to social networking and the proliferation of user-generated content on the Web.

When I think about how my family traveled when I was younger, it had everything to do with brand. My father was a loyal Hyatt customer so when we went to New York we stayed at the Hyatt and when we went to Hawaii we stayed at the Hyatt. To him, Hyatt was a trusted brand. He knew that if he booked us a room at any Hyatt, anywhere in the world, we would have a clean room in a safe neighborhood with good service and amenities. He depended on the brand name because he didn’t have the time or the inclination to reach out to his friends or a travel agent or pick up a city guide at the bookstore.

Today, my choice of hotel has very little to do with the brand or the corporate marketing efforts of the hotel. Rather, it has everything to do with recommendations and referrals since they’re now so easy to get online. For example, I can ask my personal networks on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. I can do a Google search and read reviews without even clicking on a hotel’s link. I can read reviews on more than a dozen popular review sites and OTAs. I can engage in travel forums or pose the question on Quora. Regardless of the site, I am sure to receive many responses that are ripe with personal anecdotes, travelers’ photos and even video. Any suggestion can be verified in just minutes online, without having to pick up a phone.

Compare these sources of information with what was available in the 80’s. If somebody told my father to stay at an independent boutique hotel in New York, he wouldn’t be able to verify the recommendation without making some calls. And of course if he phoned the hotel they would have sent him a beautiful brochure full of wide-angled photos and glowing marketing verbiage. But today, it’s easy to follow-up on a recommendation to ensure a hotel will meet your needs as review are only a click away, prolific on OTAs as well as stand-alone sites focused completely on user-generated content. This browsing behavior has been documented by an April, 2011 Cornell University research study. According to the study, on average, hotel consumers made twelve visits to an OTA’s website, requested 7.5 pages per visit, and spent almost five minutes on each page before booking.

Travel happens to be a pastime that people are passionate about. Everyone has opinions about favorite places, hotels and restaurants and people are sharing their experiences, both good and bad, all over the Web. And the great news for independent hotels is that joining the conversation is totally free, although you must be prepared to invest internal time and resources. You don’t have to have the big marketing budgets of a Hyatt or a Hilton to engage on a travel forum on TripAdvisor, for example, about the best things to do in New York City. Anyone with value to add is welcome. I don’t know about you, but if I saw a concierge or a GM from an independent hotel providing insight about his city on a travel forum, I would be impressed and would strongly consider staying at his hotel the next time I came to town. Smart hoteliers should begin to engage in travel forums and share their knowledge of their city. It would add so much to the conversation and improve the reputation of the hotel.

Facebook and Twitter also provide great benefits for the independent hotels as they are essentially free mini-CRMs. Savvy independent hotels are using these communication vehicles as simple loyalty programs. For example, many hotels have set up programs whereby if consumers follow the hotel on Twitter and Facebook, they will be rewarded at check-in with upgrades, special rates or extra amenities. These promotions are free to run. You don’t need a design team, a copywriter and a research team to get started. All you need is a Facebook Page or a Twitter account and an idea that you would like to test.

Another great use of social media sites is to forge closer 1:1 bonds with customers. I have seen hotels use these channels to pose questions to their followers about menu selections, design choices, event themes and favorite cocktails. While simple and quick to answer, these polls make people feel like insiders and like their voice matters. In fact, during a recent trip to San Diego, I dined at a hotel restaurant that I ‘like’ on Facebook. I commented on a few of his photos and told him that I couldn’t wait to try his food. He responded that I should say hello when I was in town, so I did. He came out during dessert with a special, off-the-menu sampler. I was thrilled and I immediately tweeted and told my Facebook network about the awesome experience. Why was it so special? For one, I felt like a friend of the hotel. Second, I felt singled out. This type of friendship, forged off-site, was impossible to come by before the rise of social media and user-generated content.

And just as my example illustrates, if you provide a great experience for your guests, they are more likely to write reviews. But since providing a great experience should be the goal of every hotel, you need to exceed your guests’ expectations and ensure that they only have great things to say in their reviews. Take a look at your reviews today and see what people complain about. Can you change your policies to remove the common complaints? Perhaps it’s ‘surprise’ fees like internet and parking. Can you bundle the cost of internet into the price of the room and provide free internet? Is there a way to let guests know about your parking fees before they drive up, or provide off-site parking options in advance? Or can you offer a rate that includes discounted or free parking? If you sell on OTAs being transparent about pricing is especially important as those customers are the most likely to complain about additional fees..

Finally, TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index is another tool that independent hoteliers can use to their benefit, and it requires neither a budget, not a brand name. In fact, if you look at the hotels at the top of the list for the major cities in the United States, there are many independent hotels. In fact, in my city, San Francisco, only two of the top ten hotels are branded. The rest are independent. So how can you compete on TripAdvisor? TripAdvisor has an algorithm that it uses to rank properties. To improve your ranking you must generate a lot of reviews, receive great feedback in your reviews, and have a lot of content about your hotel across the Web. And once again, it doesn’t take a big budget or marketing arm to do that.

Michelle Wohl is the VP of Marketing and Client Services at Revinate, a San Francisco-based software company that helps hoteliers take control of their online reputation by using online reviews and social media to learn from and connect with travelers. At Revinate, Ms. Wohl is responsible for marketing, account management, University relations, training and customer support. With more than fifteen years of technology marketing under her belt, Ms. Wohl has lived through many great bubbles and technology trends. A true dotcom veteran, she started her career in product marketing at GoLive Systems, creators of the first WYSIWYG Web authoring product for the Mac. Ms. Wohl can be contacted at 415-290-3707 or michelle@revinate.com Extended Bio...

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