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.

It is widely known that online review feedback has become critical to the success of hotels and resorts. Users' reviews are not only influencing other travelers' booking decisions but are now informing management practices at the property level. While negative feedback is being leveraged for training and retraining programs, positive feedback is feeding into employee recognition programs. In fact, guest reviews might be the most powerful data a hotel has at its disposal, yet it’s often not [...]

With over 170 million active users, Twitter has firmly established itself as the leading microblog platform. For the traveler, Twitter can play a useful part at each phase of the guest experience. It can be used as a tool to learn more about the destination pre-stay, a means to discover ongoing specials and events during his/her time on-property and an opportunity to stay connected with and informed by the property long after the visit has ended. Accordingly, Twitter has truly [...]

Last month, we hosted a Social Media State of the Union webinar that focused on the rapid emergence of three newer social platforms: Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest. While each of these channels has certainly sequestered significant industry buzz throughout 2012, the major of hospitality marketers are still testing the waters to figure out how each platform can contribute to a more engaged, integrated social media plan. Over the next few weeks, we will take a more in-depth look at each of these channels and provide some tips and insights as to how to best manage your hotel or restaurant’s presence on each channel. First up: Instagram.

When operating a hotel, you are bound to face guest complaints. It's an inherently obvious truth of the business: no matter how high your property's star rating or sterling your current reputation - you will be faced with innumerable challenges, whether service or product-related, that can immediately turn your customer into your biggest advocate or disgruntled reviewer upon checking-out.From a post-stay perspective this paradigm is all too familiar, as your now enthusiastic evangelist or infuriated invitee [...]

Proclaimed by CEO & Co-Founder Joe Fernandez to be the “most comprehensive and accurate model they’ve ever released”, the Klout platform has quadrupled the number of signals it measures (now over 400) across seven networks (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare) and has – for the first time – integrates Wikipedia data to assess a person’s offline influence.