Travelers posted 27% more hotel reviews in 2017 than a year
earlier, and most of that growth can be attributed to Google.
The findings are part of the Global Hotel Reputation
Benchmark Report prepared by Revinate, a software and data analytics company
for hotels that analyzed 132 million online guests reviews from 138,000 properties
across 200 countries.
Nearly three-quarters of all reviews come from the top four
sites: Booking.com, Google, TripAdvisor and Facebook.
Booking.com retained its lead as the top review aggregator, but Google is gaining ground. Reviews on the site in 2017 were more than 200% above the 2016 level, with about two-thirds of that content posting between July and
December.
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Google reviews accounted for 70% of the net review growth across
all sites in 2017. Without the Google data, Revinate says the year-over-year
growth in reviews would have been just 9% - not 27%.
Facebook is a new entry in the top four, replacing
Hotels.com.
Response rates
Properties received an average of 37 reviews per month in
2017 - up from 28 in 2016 - and most were positive, with an average score of
4.23.
“With this increase in review volume, we’re pleased to see
hoteliers mostly keeping pace with their responses,” says Marc Heyneker,
Revinate co-founder and CEO.
In 2017, for sites that allow responses, properties responded
to nearly 30% of all reviews, about the same as the year prior. Five-star
reviews are the most likely to generate a response (32.8%), followed by
two-star (31.2%) and one-star (28.8%).
Hoteliers in Asia Pacific and Latin America had the highest
response rates, at 40% and 39%, respectively, while hotels in North America and
EMEA were both at 25%.
“We’re also
encouraged to see that hoteliers and review sites are getting better at driving
guests to write online reviews, an effort that ultimately results in more
bookings,” Heyneker says.
Revinate says hoteliers should use the data to benchmark
their own review management practices and should take note to pay attention to
both established and emerging channels like Google and Facebook.