What to expect when you join - Hotels

It's way and above the question we are asked the most, and every year the answer gets better (and more precise). So here's 2014's version (if you want to know more detail on any of the points below, follow the links)...

• Your TripAdvisor ranking will go up - the average for hotels joining last year was by 16%. If you currently rank 300 (out of 1072) in London, by the end of your first year of membership you will be looking to rank at 250 or higher 

• Your Booking.com score will improve - by an average of 0.4. For example, if your hotel is currently scoring 7.9, by the end of year 1 with Dialogue you will be aiming to score 8.3 or higher
• You will get far fewer negatives posted to TripAdvisor - an average of 77% less. Let's put this in stark relief - if you had 10 'poor' or 'terrible' reviews on TripAdvisor in the last 12 months you should expect less than 3 in the coming 12 months (Dialogue will also make a significant dent in your 'average' reviews as well).
• You will get more positives posted to TripAdvisor - at least 25% more; one client has achieved 37%! And that, combined with the reduction in negatives will make a huge impact on your ranking which will, in turn, feed through into bookings
• You will be able increase guest retention - up to one in five of the reviews posted will contain an issue where the guest might reasonably not be expected to return - until you adopted Dialogue. You will be able to respond to these in private and reassure the guest sufficiently to a) prevent them publishing a negative review and b) retain their custom
• Dialogue works better than the alternatives - some hotels use in-house CRM to address the issue of reviews and some link to external review sites. However well these are currently working, Dialogue will achieve better results

So much for hard statistics, what about anecdotal reports from clients? These include...

• Reducing OTA commissions - having independently verified reviews showing next to your booking engine enhances the chances that your potential guests will book direct in a way that showing in-house generated reviews or an external feed can never do
• Being put in a much stronger position when (re)negotiating contracts. Looking better than your competitors always helps here; also: first impressions count, and not having a 1 Star review on page one of TripAdvisor makes a difference too
• Your potential guests will welcome Dialogue - for its independence and for the fact that the reviews are more representative. 

How does your hotel score?

Here's how we analyse our potential clients' review management. No-one has ever scored more than 8 out of 10 (more often well-managed hotels score between 3-5), so there's massive potential for HelpHound and Dialogue to improve your performance.  

And for those of you who struggle to respond to reviews...

There's Feedback Manager. And thanks to Cornell University's School of Hospitality and their research we now know that responding to reviews generates more (and better) reviews for our clients in the future.