Articles tagged “ugc”

Getting more aggressive in hotels is a natural fit for Yelp, although it remains to be seen how far Yelp intends to take it.

Travelers want to ensure hotel management is responding to their concerns, and it shows potential guests reading the responses on TripAdvisor that this is not a do-nothing hotel, and makes improvements. And with user-submitted photos on TripAdvisor, seeing really is believing.

TripAdvisor may have its challenges, but unlike magazines it doesn't have to chase advertisers or pay top dollar for content. It's a mix that may be difficult for a magazine veteran to understand, but it won't be hard to get used to.

Critics who blast the negativity of reviews on TripAdvisor may be surprised that the average review rating is 4.12 out of 5. But some hoteliers say a property's ranking in the pecking order in any given city is even more important.

InterContinental Hotels is savvy to recognize that it needs to go beyond the low-hanging fruit of converting lookers into bookers, and needs to be involved in earlier and later phases of the guest journey. Amadeus has experience with some of these things on the airline side of things, but it remains to be seen how effective it will translate into hotels.

We didn't get to fully assess the Routehappy integration into the Priceline iOS app since it is doing so on a test basis, but if it is truly transparent and enables flyers to view ratings, warts and all, then this should be interesting.

While the hospitality industry is becoming more aware about the impact of user-generated peer reviews, Getaroom and ReviewPro explain why they're important and why they're exploding in popularity.

A redesign has to be more than pretty pictures, and TripAdvisor's facelift is geared to emphasize its no-apologies approach to user-generated content.

Given the expense of dispatching staff to each hotel to write reviews and take photos, Oyster never had a clear business model. But it is clear that TripAdvisor values Oyster's photos as a way to bridge the gap between hotel-supplied photos and very amateur guest photos.

Many reputation management firms have made a living out of criticizing Yelp and TripAdvisor, and some of them have crossed the line and gotten into the fake-review writing business themselves. There are reputation management firms with integrity out there, but these 19 companies are not among them.