Skift Take
The golden nugget in this launch is the opportunity to open up the platform and allow all corporations of a certain size or influence to share hotel reviews based solely on business travelers’ needs.
Carlson Wagonlist Travel announced the launch of its private hotel review site for companies today. CWT Hotel Intel was modeled off popular leisure travel review sites including TripAdvisor and Priceline.
Each corporation will have their own private page where only employees and travel managers will be able to view the reviews. Business travelers will be prompted via email to rate and review the properties after their stay. Each hotel listing will include additional information on facilities, amenities, and room rates.
It is expected that travel managers will be able to leverage the dissatisfied reviews to lower prices or switch hotels, if need be. Hotel feedback will also help corporations adjust their travel policies for their specific destinations.
“The development of CWT Hotel Intel is very much aligned with the current trends we’re seeing in the industry – travelers increasingly use peer group information to make decisions,” said Patrice Simon, innovation leader at CWT.
A study released by the Cornell School of Hotel Administration set out to validate this assumption and found that the majority of travelers will research a minimum of 15 travel websites and visit TripAdvisor at least 4 times before booking a hotel.
Business travelers may have turned to TripAdvisor or similar sites in past, but likely have very different priorities from the majority of leisure travelers that populate those sites.
Although the data will be remain private for each company for now, Simon explains that Carlson Wagonlit will consider making it a public network for all business travelers in the future.
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Tags: carlson wagonlit, reviews