TrustYou has published a new report which shows that why actively asking for reviews from hotel guests should be a critical part of hotels’ CRM strategy.

The report was based on feedback collected through Qualtrics from a panel of 920 US consumers over the age of 18 who had traveled within the previous 12 months and booked accommodation for business or leisure.

• 80% of travelers who received a request left a review
• Only 22% of travelers wrote a review without being asked
• The majority (54%) of guests have experience writing and submitting at least one review in the previous 12-months.
• On average, 95% of traveler reviews are positive; 93% of travelers’ most recent reviews are reportedly positive.

Travelers are most likely (51%) to leave reviews using desktop devices; 35% of travelers leave reviews on mobile devices and 14% use both mobile and desktop device to post their reviews.

Generation X is the most generous generation (97.1% positive) when it comes to hotel reviews; 94.8% of Baby Boomers and 93.5% of Millennials gave positive feedback.

Men are 7% more likely than women to have left a review over the previous 12 months, and also 23% more likely to have written four or more reviews per year.

However, TrustYou finds that women leave 3% more positive reviews than men.

Asking pays off

Soliciting reviews during or after the journey can also foster positive feedback and ratings, and support reputation management by balancing any negative reviews left online by disgruntled guests.

When a review is requested by an accommodation provider, guests are 3.6x times more likely to leave a review. Reviews requested are also 16% more likely to be “extremely positive” five-star reviews.

More than 96% of reviews solicited by hoteliers received positive replies.

After price, review score is a key driver of bookings. In large part, this is due to the filtering feature of online booking platforms since 88% of travelers sort out hotel scores under three stars; 33% of travelers filter to see hotels with four-star ratings or higher.

The full report can be downloaded here.

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Just how valuable are online reviews