Improve Your Reputation, Bring in More Revenue. Don’t Believe Us? Calculate It For Yourself.

For those who ask why you’re spending so much time on all this online review “stuff,” tell them time is money. The time you spend managing your hotel’s online reputation brings in more revenue, and we have developed this handy calculator to show you just how much more revenue your better reputation is worth.

In a recent study, TrustYou found that with a higher TrustScore, a hotel can charge 4.6% more per night for its rooms without seeing a significant drop in occupancy. As it turns out, guests are willing to pay more for a hotel with a better reputation.

Before you go crunching the numbers yourself, check out our calculator. Enter in your hotel’s TrustScore, its number of rooms, occupancy rate and average daily rate below, and we’ll calculate the additional revenue your hotel could be bringing in based on the premium rates guests will pay for a hotel with a stellar reputation.

Here’s the research behind the calculations:
We analyzed 350 three, four and five star hotels from 10 major markets* in our database, comparing the hotel’s TrustScore and its average room rate as listed on TripAdvisor. We also ensured that occupancy rates of hotels in the sample were all stable. We found that with a 1% increase in TrustScore, a hotel’s average daily room rate increases about 4.6%.

What to do with these findings:
No doubt you have already optimized your hotel's room rates, but if you aren’t including review scores and sentiment in your company’s goal-setting, analysis and pricing strategy, you may be leaving money on the table. Hotels should track these scores and actively work to improve them. If a property sees an improvement in its review scores, it may have an opportunity to adjust pricing. With a better reputation, guests are willing to pay a bit more to stay at your hotel than at a competitor with slightly lower rates and a lower reputation.

For hotels testing out these pricing adjustments, we recommend starting small. Consider adjusting prices by just a percent or two if you have seen your reputation improve. If occupancy rates stay the same, consider readjusting in small increments until you find your optimum pricing (i.e. occupancy rates are not dropping). The end result: increased rates that can be directly attributed to an improvement in your online reputation.

Like we said from the get go, your online reputation can drive revenue. So, unless you have a surplus of cash that you just don’t know what to do with, start focusing on your reputation. You can thank us later.

*10 markets: Amsterdam, Bangkok, Brussels, Hong Kong, London, Munich, Paris, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney.