Hotel Success Stories: Update on The Morning Star Express

Revinate is happy to announce that one of its customers has been awarded the TripAdvisor 2014 Certificate of Excellence. This prestigious award recognizes businesses that consistently earn top ratings from TripAdvisor travelers.

In February, we featured the Morning Star Express hotel in Pretoria, South Africa as one of Revinate’s hotel success stories. This independent hotel, opened in 2010, had to establish itself and compete against industry giants like Sun International and Protea.

With Revinate, the hotel has been able to build its online reputation and move from number fifteen to number four on the TripAdvisor Popularity Index.

The Morning Star Express accomplished this in two ways:

1. It used Revinate’s Post-Stay Surveys to improve its TripAdvisor Popularity Index Ranking.

A hotel’s TripAdvisor ranking is based on the recency, quality, and quantity of reviews. When a hotel gets a larger number of recent, positive reviews, its ranking goes up. With Post-Stay Surveys, hotels can collect guest reviews and automatically submit them to TripAdvisor. More than 40% of all the feedback the Morning Star Express Hotel collects comes from Post-Stay Surveys.

2. It used Revinate’s automated guest feedback analysis to make smart operational changes.

General Manager Philip Lategan says, “We carefully listened to our guest feedback and started adding products and services. While we still operate as an ‘express’ with limited services, I consider the hotel to be the best value for the money in Pretoria.”

Guest agree. Two months after the hotel signed up for Revinate, the Morning Star Express had increased its average rating across all 5 service categories on review sites.

As feedback quantity and quality increases, the hotel has not only had more insight about the guest experience–it also increased its ranking on TripAdvisor. This has a definite impact on direct bookings, which leads to more revenue for the hotel.

GM Philip Lategan was very proud to receive this prestigious award. “[We] could not have done it without you guys,” he told Revinate.