Online Reviews: The Bane of Hotels’ Existence or an Unprecedented Opportunity?

A few years ago at Opus Hotel Vancouver we relocated a couple who had driven up from Washington state to celebrate the husband’s fiftieth birthday. It was a nasty thing to do, but it happens in the hotel business, more frequently than most travelers think. Like the airlines, hotels overbook when demand is high, banking on a few no-shows, and occasionally we get caught with our pants down. Unlike the airlines, however, we don’t broadcast an oversold situation to a holding lounge full of travelers. We handle relocate situations discreetly, one-on-one with travelers, and typically no one is the wiser.

Or so that used to be the case. Social media networking has brought issues that used to be handled quietly between hotel and guest out into the open for the scrutiny of all. In this case, the couple retaliated by posting a bitter review on TripAdvisor and two other travel review sites. Their account of the incident was mostly accurate, something we hoteliers appreciate, although they declined to mention our many efforts to make amends. We would have preferred they hadn’t taken their grievance public, but we screwed up, so fair game.

Hotels have always worked hard to keep guests happy, in part because we depend on repeat business to fill our rooms, but also because it’s hammered into our brains early on that one unhappy guest will tell at least five others. Today, that number has compounded into hundreds and even thousands. With a few clicks of a mouse, an irate guest can broadcast his beef to entire online communities via Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Yelp, or any other of the burgeoning group of social networking forums. Word of mouth has been usurped by word of mouse, a vastly more efficient—and potentially damaging—means of spreading the word.