Hotel reviews help guests choose the right accommodation with greater confidence. However, they are even more important for accommodation providers, as they provide us with direct insight into the needs and the actual experience of the guest.
In City Hotel Ljubljana and its sister hotel Slon, we discuss new reviews at each morning staff meeting and consider them as we make strategic decisions and design our revenue policy.
We have established a methodology for monitoring guest experiences using the TrustYou platform. To measure our performance, we leverage several metrics captured from different portals (TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Google My Business, etc.) by this tool. We consider the TrustYou Comp Index to be the most important performance indicator. This is a set of results from 4 key areas (hotel catering, reception, maintenance, and housekeeping), which compares our performance to the performance of competing hotels in Ljubljana. The 3-star superior City Hotel shines the brightest here, rising even above its 4-star competitors.
In cases like these, an increase in the overall hotel rating may also drive a rise in service prices. In 2012, U.S. Cornell University proved there is a causal link between a rise in the rating score from 3.3 to 4.3 (i.e. 1 point on a 5-point scale) and the possibility of raising prices by 11.2%.
Now let’s look at how we look at the reviews we receive in practice. For example, we initially considered introducing full mini-bars for the new City rooms, we noticed a trend in the comments that guests miss empty refrigerators more. We decided to listen to the wishes of the guests, and the decision was additionally influenced by the well-received offer of drinks and snacks in a special corner of our comfortable lobby that is accessible 24/7. We also took action after receiving several mediocre reviews of City hotel’s breakfast over a period of time. Since the comments did not mention anything specific and did not criticize the food, we set about transforming the ambiance. We updated the breakfast room in the restaurant and on the summer terrace with new trendy furniture and greenery and broke up the buffet table into several smaller islands. To our surprise, the change was quickly reflected in the reviews of our culinary offer.
The most important benefit of our guest reviews is being able to constantly improve our service based on the results.
We are pleased that guests like to share their feedback with us - City Hotel Ljubljana with 197 rooms receives as many as 4,300 a year, and Hotel Slon with 170 rooms receives 3,300. City's guests give out the highest scores to our service, location, and new rooms, while Hotel Slon guests are impressed by the rich Slon breakfast in addition to the hotel service and location.