700% more reviews in Hotel Number One

Background

The management team at Hotel Number One worked very hard on attracting new guests by utilising the TripAdvisor and Google Maps reputation. Gdansk is a very popular city for travellers, so hotels are competing hard for the business of the city’s visitors.

Moreover, bookings made through Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) such as booking.com would eat into the revenue of a popular hotel. This is a challenge for any hotel, but more so when operating in an location with so much freedom of choice for travellers.

The Challenge

Hotel Number One determined that Social WiFi would be a commercially viable investment for them if it led to an increase in direct bookings and if their ranking on TripAdvisor were to improve.

TripAdvisor was important to their team because it’s a well-researched fact that the higher your ranking, the more bookings you will receive, and you can charge more per room per night.

The team wanted to capture customer contact information to add them to their direct marketing lists in hope that their campaigns would attract more guests back on their next stay in the City. With vast numbers of booking coming from OTA’s, improving the volume of direct bookings is good way to improve revenue.

The Solution

After a swift installation of Social WiFi, which was done by simply adding one extra router to the IT network, guests were prompted to log on to the Free WiFi network by authenticating via Facebook, Google or Email Verification. This would provide Hotel Number One with a database of accurate and verified guest contact information.

We know that the data is accurate because the data received from Social Media login is already verified by the Social Network and is automatically pushed to Social WiFi. When logging in via email, a verification email is sent to the user with a link to click verifying their email address belongs to them and gives internet access. This information is shared with the Hotel Number One so that they can directly market to previous guests of the hotel and encourage them to book without going through 3rd party websites.

Social WiFi also integrated the data capture service with TripAdvisor Review Express in order to automatically ask guests for their feedback after a visit. Branded emails are sent when a guest leaves the hotel and happy customers are asked to share a few words on TripAdvisor about the hotel.

In the scenario that a guest leaves negative feedback, the hotel is given the ability to respond directly to that guest via email and try to resolve any outstanding issues that is causing unhappiness.

The Result

The Social WiFi review system has generated over 700% more reviews than the usual traffic.

Both the average online rating and the TripAdvisor popularity ranking of Hotel Number One has increased drastrically.