Yesterday, Facebook announced upgrades to their mobile application's Nearby functionality for both the iPhone and Android. This upgrade now positions Facebook's mobile app much closer to Foursquare's recent local recommendation terrain, as users can search and find local businesses to visit, based on their proximity, by name or category. In addition to enhancing the application's local discovery functions, Facebook's Nearby also now comes with a 5 star ratings system for local businesses that is noticeably [...]

Today we hosted a webinar on how leveraging online reviews and social media can help hotel operators capture more information about customers than ever before and use that information to improve hotel operations. For those of you who missed the session, we have a recording ready and waiting for you, as well as some key pointers and takeaways below. Why is Online Review Data Critical for Operations? Hotels and restaurants that sign up with Revinate [...]

The following accolades would make any General Manager blush -- Number one in the U.S. in 2011 on tripadvisor® Travelers’ Choice®, as awarded by millions of real travelers. Number one in the world on Expedia® Insiders’ Select™ 2011. And finally, Best New Restaurant to open in 2010 by readers of Seattle. But when the hotel isn’t a five star luxury resort, but rather a three and a half star, 104 room airport hotel, you know [...]

Revinate Goes Global with Increased Language Support and Regional Offices to Answer Growing Worldwide Demand for Online Reputation and Social Media Management Revinate Adds 12 of the World’s Most Common Languages to Upgraded Platform; New Release Supports Growing International Customer Base Featuring Top Global Brands in 120 Countries San Francisco, Calif.—November 5, 2012—Revinate, the new standard for guest satisfaction for the hospitality industry, announced today that its online reputation management platform analyzes social media content [...]

Revinate received some nice press coverage today by Heather Clancy at ZDNet. The article focuses on how Revinate helps small hotels manage their online reputation and includes customer commentary from James Lim at Joie de Vivre, one of our first clients. Read the story at ZDNet.

There is much being said about how to respond to negative or positive reviews. However the reality is that many reviews are mixed. When hotel or restaurant guests write reviews, they often have both something good and bad to say about their experience. I have noticed that mixed reviews either have a management response that glosses over the less-glowing feedback, or no response at all. When review responses ignore challenging feedback in mixed reviews it is easy to see which hotels and restaurants are closely reading and absorbing feedback, and which are posting canned responses. Customers want to know that they have been heard, so if you don’t address constructive feedback in a mixed review, it may seem that management isn’t really listening to customers.