Why is Hotel Reputation Management Important for Hotel Marketing Today?

More than any other industry, online reputation management is critical for the hotel industry as even any stray negative online comment can adversely affect its business. Experts opine that no other industry is likewise affected by the impact of Reputation Management as the hospitality industry.

It is a common practice all over the world to perform online travel research before booking a hotel accommodation. User generated content, as reviews or feedback, will heavily contribute to the ultimate decision of prospective customers.

With a flawed reputation, your hotel will lose sales to competitors. It is universally agreed “Online reputation management is becoming hugely important to hotels because reviews have a direct correlation with demand, the holy grail of revenue management.”

To those less familiar, hotel reputation management is recognized as the practice of monitoring and influencing the fair name of your hotel throughout the web. There are today several newly emerging review sites, social media and search engine that will show up all positive, as well as negative reviews about your hotel. Whether the positive reviews make the necessary impact or not, any adverse comment has the potential to ruin your hotel business

Prospective travellers/tourists all over the world and from all age groups perform online travel research before booking hotel accommodation. According to TripAdvisor, a whopping 93% of the people find reviews important when determining which hotel they want to stay at. Further, research reveals that 53% of the people surveyed would not book a hotel without having a guest opinion about it.

Positive feedback from satisfied guests sharing their experiences about your hotel is very invaluable. The impact of negative reviews if found online should be diminished and even suppressed but used to set right the deficiencies of your hotel management.

Thus, it is becoming increasingly important for you as a hotelier to build up a professional hotel reputation management that keeps tracking your reputation all over the web. The very success of your hotel business is hugely dependent on it.

You should promptly counteract the impact of negative reviews and highlight all positive feedback. Consequently, hotel reputation management entails constant vigil and swift action. Hotel ORM should be an essential part of your marketing mix as in the very competitive field of the hospitality industry; your online reputation directly affects your sales volume.