Hotel Reviews: It’s a Fact, They’re An Integral Part of the Booking Process

Once upon a time guests went to a handful of review sites to decide on a hotel, then they left and went to book. Now reviews tie directly into booking.

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In Eye for Travel’s 2013 tips for hotel distribution, I was particularly struck by their firmness that not only do hotels need to be on top of responding, but “hotels have to feature such content - hotel reviews - to secure bookings.” We’ve known this all along at TrustYou, which is why we offer a TrustScore for our hotel websites. We call it “Reputation Marketing”: getting ahead of reputation instead of reacting to it. Hotels have historically cringed at pushing reviews on their own sites. It feels too risky. But now the risk is really in not having reviews available front and center. The third-party sites are more than happy to do it, and they’ll get the bookings because consumers expect guest reviews everywhere along the way.

If you haven’t already integrated guest reviews on your site, make that a line item for your 2014 marketing plan.