Hotel v destination – what matters more to guests looking for romance?

by February 8, 2017 10:09 am Press Releases

Singapore, Munich, 8 February, 2017 - Wego.com, the leading travel search site in the Asia Pacific and Middle East, along with its guest review data partner, TrustYou, reveals which country’s hotels rate highest with guests for romance, leading up to Valentine’s Day.

“There were some interesting trends that came to light while analysing the TrustYou data from guest reviews for romantic hotels in a variety of locations,” said Anna Trushkina, Director, Hotels Commercial for Wego.

“Some destinations are intrinsically linked to romance by association with their beautiful surroundings - destinations like Bali, the Thai islands and country or coastal properties in Australia, which are distanced from capital cities. Others definitely associated five star luxury with romance - where opulence and quality contributed to a romantic guest experience,” Trushkina added.

“Four and five star ratings correlated with high romance scores from guests especially in the United Arab Emirates, India and Hong Kong, yet there were a mixture of ratings in the top 25 in Singapore and Malaysia - between three and five stars,” Trushkina observed. “Japan received the highest romance scores of all the country's analysed, with the entire top 25 rated 99 to 100 for romance. Properties too were the most varied in terms of star rating, ranked between two and five stars.”

“Valentine’s day flows seamlessly into seasonality calendars after Christmas, New Year and Chinese New Year for hotels. It’s a great opportunity for hoteliers to increase sales and reach a potentially new and loyal market segment, and great Valentine’s Day packages help boost brand awareness and repeat guests,” Trushkina continued. “Many of these properties who rate high for romance by guests also offer great weekend packages to keep couples coming back, especially with staycation weekends gaining popularity in many of these locations.”


Benjamin Jost, CEO at TrustYou, adds: “As the world’s largest guest feedback platform, we collect and evaluate three million reviews, posts and guest surveys every week. We provide the biggest database of analyzed review content to hotels and travel websites such as Wego across the globe. For this specific set of data we analyzed a large number of reviews that included the “romantic” parameter and thereby identified the intensity and sentiment, number of mentions for the category as well as the TrustScore - the summarized score of all verified reviews worldwide. This was summed up into the “Romantic Score”, which allowed us to determine the top 25 most romantic hotels for each country.”

Australia

In Australia, mother nature played a seemingly large role in elevating romance rankings with the top three properties achieving 100 percent for romance in spectacular locations such as Narooma (NSW), Rainbow Beach (QLD) and New Norfolk (Tasmania).

Bed and breakfasts and cottages replaced five star properties in the top 25 in Australia, scoring between 97 and 100 in TrustYou guest rankings. New South Wales had the majority on the list with seven high romance hotels, followed by six in Queensland, four in Tasmania and South Australia, three in Victoria, and The Good Life B&B the only representative in Western Australia.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, 24 of the top 25 properties scoring highest for romance are not surprisingly located in Bali. Ten properties are situated in the lush, jungle hinterland of Ubud, and others scattered throughout trendy Seminyak, Jimbaran and Nusa Dua. Bali overall ranks very highly for romantic hotels, from 95 to 99 percent.

Jakarta’s Mandarin Oriental scored 96 percent, and was the country’s only other entry in the top 25 not located in Bali.

Malaysia

Another island paradise, this time in Malaysia, Langkawi scored seven of the top 25 in the country, from 84 to the first two spots (99 and 97 percent) on the TrustYou romance ladder.

Other high scoring properties were located in Kuala Lumpur (x5), Penang (x4), Melaka (x3), Perak (x2) and one property each in Kota Kinabalu, Terengganu, Sabah and Sarawak. All 25 were rated between 83 and 99 percent for romance.

“Luxury boutique hotel hideaways with rainforest surrounds also dominate the list - the Datai and Ambong Ambong in Langkawi, and Pangkor Laut Resort which is located on its own island in Perak,” added Trushkina.

Singapore

Singapore’s romance ratings ranged from 77 and topped out at 96 percent. While many of the Lion City’s hotels listed in the top 25 were five star, Singapore proves that star rating doesn’t always equate to the most romantic. Three star properties Lloyd’s Inn, The Daulat Hotel and Changi Cover all scored 88 percent for romance.

“It’s interesting that in spite of the big branded, high end properties topping the list, small individual hotels are becoming increasingly popular with couples too,” said Trushkina. “Singaporeans love their staycations which is reflected in the romance scores of these cosy and trendy alternatives.”

Top spots went to longtime favourites Shangri-La Hotel (96), The Fullerton Bay (94), Four Seasons (93), The Westin (93), Pan Pacific (93) and Raffles (92).

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was a mixed bag, scoring between 69 and reaching 95 for romance by hotel guests. Similarly to Singapore, Hong Kong’s most romantic properties were 4/5 star hotels. The Peninsula came in at number one (95), followed by the Landmark Mandarin Oriental (94), Four Seasons (91), Kowloon Shangri-La (89) and East Hotel (89).

“The listed hotels are spread across Hong Kong Island, the New Territories and Kowloon and included properties like the Auberge Discovery Bay, who are offering Valentine’s Day packages for five days!” Trushkina observed.

Thailand

With no shortage of romantic hotspots in Thailand, there was a wide spread of destinations where hotels ranked high on the romance meter with guests. The top five were made up of hotels in Phuket (#1, #5), Bangkok (#2/3) and Koh Samui (#4). In fact tropical romance played a big role with eight properties in the top 25 located in Phuket and Koh Samui (each), four in Bangkok, three in Hua Hin, and two in Chiang Mai. Overall guests ranked Thai hotels high on the romance barometer, between 96 and 99.

“Romance seekers, particularly in Phuket, prefer secluded, tucked away resorts such as The Surin,” said Trushkina.

Japan

Japan’s top 25 hotels scored the highest of all the countries analysed for romance. Of the top 25 hotels, 14 scored 100 for romance by guests, and 11 scored 99. Locations were spread across the country, from Tokyo to Gifu, Hyogo and Shizuoka and some very picturesque locations.

From the four star The Westin Sendai, north of Tokyo, to the two star Mizuhaso in Hatsukaichi, romance wasn’t contingent to star rating.

India

Unlike Japan, 21 of the 25 of India’s top guest-rated romantic hotels are five star properties, and scored between 86 and 99. Three Leela properties featured in the top five; The Leela Kovalam Beach (99), Leela Palace New Delhi (96) and The Leela Goa (96). The Raintree Hotel in Chennai (97) and Taj Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur (96) rounded out the top five.

United Arab Emirates

With star ratings from four to seven, hotels in the United Arab Emirates scored between 91 and 98 for romance with guests. Dubai’s Méridien and Jumeirah properties featured more than once in the top 25, Jumeirah at Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi also.

Twenty of the top 25 properties in the UAE were located in Dubai, with four in Abu Dhabi, and one, the Ajman Saray, a Luxury Collection Resort in Ajman.

A graphic listing each of the top 25 hotels, star ratings and romance scores by country is available here.

-ENDS-

About Wego

Wego.com provides award winning travel search websites and top ranked mobile apps for travellers living in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions. Wego harnesses powerful yet simple to use technology that automates the process of searching and comparing results from hundreds of airline, hotel and online travel agency websites. Wego presents an unbiased comparison of all travel products and prices offered in the marketplace by merchants, both local and global, and enables shoppers to quickly find the best deal and place to book whether from an airline or hotel direct, or with a third party aggregator website. Wego was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Singapore with regional operations in Dubai, Bangalore and Jakarta. Investors include Tiger Global Management, Crescent Point Group and SquarePeg Capital. Each month Wego sends flight and hotel booking referrals worth US$1.5B to travel partners.

About TrustYou

TrustYou, the world’s largest guest feedback platform, provides hotels with insights to improve their guest experience and market to future guests. Guest feedback influences 95% of booking decisions. TrustYou’s guest feedback platform incorporates hundreds of millions of hotel reviews, surveys, social posts as well as direct messages sent through SMS, email, Facebook Messenger, and more. Along each step of the guest journey, this information generates actionable insights for 500,000 hotels to improve their presence along each step of the guest journey, from booking and pre-stay search queries, to real-time guest requests and messages, to post-stay feedback in the form of survey responses and reviews. TrustYou’s platform is made up of various components including: TrustYou Meta-Reviews*, verified global review summaries displayed on travel and search sites like Google, KAYAK, and Hotels.com; TrustYou Messaging, real-time guest messaging service; TrustYou Stars, advanced guest satisfaction survey tool; TrustYou Analytics, the world’s leading online reputation management tool and the accompanying app TrustYou Radar. Additionally, PMS, CRM, IBE and other hotel software providers benefit from TrustYou Connect, the partner program which integrates TrustYou’s guest feedback platform into their products to help their hotel clients to positively influence every stage of the guest journey.

Find more information on TrustYou and the guest feedback platform on www.trustyou.com.

*TrustYou Meta-Reviews only contain verified reviews and do not include reviews from TripAdvisor.