Last month, MIT published a really interesting article called When Unhappy Customers Strike Back on the Internet that looks at why people turn to the internet to voice their complaints. In addition to explaining why people complain about companies, the article also helps brands understand how they should respond.In a nutshell, the authors find that "customers go online because (1) they are victims of a "double deviation"; and (2) they feel betrayed." A "double [...]

Last week I was one of the thousands of travelers who had to deal with flight cancellations and delays because of the winter storm. I was scheduled to fly from JFK to SFO on Wednesday morning but I received a flight alert on Tuesday morning that my flight was canceled. I tried calling the airline but was unable to get through to a person due to high call volume. I tried to change my flight [...]

We always joke that hotel executives should think about social media before naming their hotels. Why? If you want to make sure you are able to monitor what people are saying about the property and engage in conversations across the Web, you need a name that is unique enough to come up in searches. Just ask the London Hotel or The Hotel how hard it is to track their mentions and you'll know the struggle [...]

This post was written and submitted by The Grand America Hotels & Resorts, a Revinate client. Embracing social media and developing relevant content and strategy is what every hotel should strive toward, but don’t take our word for it. According to Travel Weekly’s April 2010 article on Social Media, “Social media use among travelers continues to grow faster than the travel industry itself. Unique monthly visitors to social travel sites rose 34% between the first [...]

At the end of September, Sir Richard Branson announced that he is getting into the hotel business. He plans to create a Virgin Hotel Empire. I have high hopes that he will approach the hotel business with an eye to doing things that guests will love, versus doing things the way they have always been done. The aim of the hotel project is to "redefine the customer journey from pre-arrival to check-out." When I look [...]

Since launching last year, Revinate has grown quickly thanks to many key influencers at hospitality companies that saw the product and made it their mission to get it adopted across the organization. Seth Godin calls these folks ‘sneezers’. Sneezers are the people that tell others about products, thereby creating an ‘Ideavirus’. Sneezers are often critical to growth as it is said that 10% of the world influences 90%. Revinate is a product that demos very [...]