Hoteliers' misinterpretation of customers reviews

In his article How to use negative reviews to effect positive change in your hotel, Daniel Edward Craig tackles the impact of negative customers’ reviews on hotels’ reputation and suggests solutions to turn them into positive action. The whole article proves that hotels’ reputation is not only about quality of service but also about communication.

Indeed, hoteliers are considerably concerned with online reviews and it turns out that they even hire people to pass themselves off as customers and write positive comments about their hotel on the web. I consider that such a plan of action is totally irrelevant for two main reasons.

First, this kind of dishonest behaviour has strongly been disparaged by most of consumers associations and magazines. Therefore, the use of fake reviews by hoteliers is not a secret anymore and customers cannot be deceived as easily as before. Parts of customers do not only refer to online reviews to select hotels because they are aware that these criteria are not actually reliable. Customers also know that people giving their opinion on the web tend more to express disappointment than satisfaction as it is a typical human feature.

Secondly, hoteliers make a serious mistake by focusing on the impact of negative reviews on their reputation rather than by improving their own means of communication. All fake positive comments they can publish online will never erase customers’ complaints. As customers can have access to the description of all quality services provided by hotels on their websites or brochures, they usually pay more attention to negative comments when they skim through online reviews in order to see how they contradict the praised image of hotels. Nevertheless, I think that customers would really appreciate if hoteliers made the effort to answer to negative users’ reviews instead of reacting with fake positive comments because it would prove that hoteliers take into account their clients’ complaints and commit themselves to improve their services in accordance with the desires of their customers.

Thus those considerations show that hoteliers need to be more imaginative in the way they communicate with their customers. The more they will create presence on the web, the more they will be able to face negative reviews, the more their popularity will increase.