TripAdvisor and the product´s myopia

Long before a hotel opens its doors for the first time, the owner or the general manager has an ideal of how they want their product to be transmitted to the public. That´s how the attributes/benefits arise with which the hotel wants to be associated, hence all staff will work on that direction to get the desired positioning. Excessive endeavor may diminish objectivity and increase subjectivity.  

In marketing this is called “myopia of the product”: the hotel believes to have a determined positioning without considering the target´s perception. Often guests´ observations are heard but not capitalized. This generates a gap between a fictional positioning (where the hotel pretends and thinks to be) and the real positioning (how the guest perceives the hotel and how he associates it with the different attributes).

To palliate this contrast, we recommend considering TripAdvisor.

As you all know this website belongs to the 2.0 concept, where its content is made by millions of people who share their travel experiences and also rate the hotel where they stayed.  Hotel managers have the right to reply in case they consider a comment unfair.

TripAdvisor received many claims about the comment´s doubtful veracity, since numerous hotels tend to write themselves positive observations to scale positions on the general rating.

Beyond controversy this site is, among all free websites for hotels, the main authority which ratings determine in a significant percentage the booking success of a lodging establishment. 

Conclusion: a hotel is often associated with variables that, due to this myopia, are not appreciated by its owner or general manager. Knowing that guests´ comments were made over months, even years, they can be analyzed one by one and take all positive and negative aspects. Those positives help to see and understand with which attributes the hotel is associated helping to develop a new strategy once it’s decided to redesign the website, for example. On the other hand, negative concepts are useful to discover which things have to be modified and changed. This is how the gap, we mentioned earlier, disappears and it generates a balance between how the hotel is perceived and how the hotel wants to be perceived.

May you have any question please send an email to pguevara@ourhotelyourhome.com

Integrated Solutions: free websites and fee-based websites

For every hotelier the idyllic scenario is just one: to become the only lodging option for all international and local tourists who visit the city where their hotel is located, but unfortunately it has to be interpreted as it is: a utopia.

Therefore it´s indispensable to seek integrated solutions to accomplish the shared main objective among all in this industry: to have full occupancy the 365 days of the year.

Knowing, from the beginning, this won´t be possible is required a worldview of all alternatives and possibilities offered by the internet and in turn analyze how they can be integrated to optimize its implementation within a marketing strategy. 

Such is the case of one of our clients who satisfactorily knew to take advantage of an antagonism: to complement a fee-based website (Booking) with a free website (TripAdvisor).

What do we mean?

Both have the same attributes: confidence and prestige among most world travelers. Then, each one has its own characteristics: TripAdvisor generates a ranking among all hotels of a specific city with guest´s comments, supreme resource for those people who are deciding which hotel to stay. Booking offers many facilities to make a reservation. Hence if a hotel enjoys a high rank on TripAdvisor but did not sign up on a fee-based website, the interested person has to enter first the hotel´s website and find the reservation engine to make a booking. Some extra seconds can mean the fall of the operation.

We recommend, with a conservative stance, to let Booking manage a low percentage of the total of the hotel´s rooms (less than 10%). This allows us to take its reservation facilities attribute to the TripAdvisor´s field.

The potentiation: TripAdvisor is the stained-glass window exhibiting the hotel in the most real and neutral way (the better rank the more possibilities) and when somebody decides to make a reservation he has all the diverse paying methods provided by Booking.

Avoid at all cost being on multiple fee-based websites because too many pop-ups will appear on the person´s screen who clicked on “Show hotels” or “Show Prices”. About this issue we will write on our next post.

We expect you share with all of us your experiences and comments about the integrated solutions you found for your hotel. 

In case you want to send us your opinion: contact@ourhotelyourhome.com

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