Vinodh Balaraman, Principal & Senior Partner · Map customer sentiment by stage of journey to hone in on issues at the property level Customer journey view of feedback can help you

Maximizing the Impact of Customer Reviews &

Ratings Sentiment Analysis for Hoteliers

Vinodh Balaraman, Principal & Senior Partner June 2016

− 2 − © 2016 ZS Associates

Why does electronic word of mouth (eWOM) matter more than ever?

Share 1 story on what happened when

hoteliers ignored or under-utilized

these reviews.

Create a collage of feedback, text come in,

Reviews are everywhere !!

What are hoteliers

most focused on?

Review / rating sentiment drives hotel choice and RevPAR!

“Online reviews influence customers’ choice of hotel and drive RevPAR. However, the quality of reviews has a greater effect on luxury hotels’ RevPAR, while the volume of reviews has a greater effect on lower-tier hotels.” – Cornell Study


What can sentiment analysis do?

Provide insights at individual customer

level to drive personalized

offers/experiences

Target audience: Marketing

Ask audiences what areas (i.e.. Revenue,

customer services, etc) of the industry they work

in.

Brief mention of who you are and what you do.

Now, link yourself with your audiences. Why are

you speaking? Why sentiment analysis? Why

now?

Provide insights to

pricing/revenue

management to drive

decisions on ADR

Target audience:

Pricing/revenue

management

Provide insights at

company/regional/

brand/property level

to inform and shape

the customer

experience

Target audience:

Marketing/brand

leaders/

franchisees

Specific marketing strategies

Customer interactions

response and recovery

Revenue management

– price premium

eWOM

Quality control and

new procedures

Online reputation

comparison

Generating loyalty

Focus on target

communi-cation

Effectively engage, respond and address

individual customer concerns / questions

(social listening command center)

Target audience: Customer service


Typical challenges with sentiment analysis

Delivering synthesized actionable insights

from extremely large volumes of unstructured

data to the right stakeholders at the right time

Getting the right context & tone from

customer comments leveraging company /

industry knowledge

Getting the taxonomy right

Making it a repeatable process

Doing it all without spending too much

money and time!


Four step approach – hotelier reviews & ratings sentiment analysis

Dashboards & KPIs Step 3:

Insights on Key

Business Questions Step 4:

“The dirtiest hotel in the

world…bugs, roaches

and other insects.”

“Exoskeleton of the

bed bug found in

our bed!!”

Data Acquisition

& Integration Step 1:

Text Analytics Step 2: ROOM

LOCATION

ROOM

SERVICE

REVENUE INFLUENCE

HARNESS CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE DATA


Let’s look at the art of the possible


Opportunity for improvement

lies in the low sentiment score

(0.3) and ~27% negative area

Global performance summary


Identify brands to look at by taking into consideration review volume

and sentiment at brand level

Clover Inn

Are these customer perceptions of

your brand consistent with your brand

positioning intent? Which brands are

reviewing poorly?


Look at the brand analysis dashboard that provides insights on

strengths/weaknesses of a brand

Keywords like Location, Stay and Bedroom have a strong, positive sentiment attached to them

(shades of green), while Microwave and Lobby need to be looked into (shades of red)

Clover Inn


Identify customer experience ‘outlier’ properties for the brand based

on the property list dashboard

Clover Inn Fort Lauderdale has a high volume of reviews with an alarmingly high

negative review count and a low overall rating


Drive impactful pricing decisions based on the strong correlation with

customer sentiment

Leverage recent sentiment score/rating movements and comparables set (competitors, like

company properties) assessment for future pricing decisions

Sentiment score

A

D

R Clover Inn FL Clover Inn FL

COMP SET

ADR vs Sentiment Score by

Property

ADR Index vs Sentiment Score Index


Map customer sentiment by stage of journey to hone in on issues at

the property level

Customer journey view of feedback can help you pinpoint and address issues. For example, “Room

Stay” with a more negative sentiment score and a higher keyword count can be a focus area


Drill down from journey stage to sub-categories to identify specific

areas of focus at the property level

Relate the count of keywords and sentiment to identify the areas of focus – in this example,

“Bathroom” and “Insects”


Drill-down from sub categories to view top positive and negative

keywords to ID specific actionable insights

Drill-down from sub-categories to specific negative keywords and associated reviews can allow

property owners/managers to identify specific actions to improve customer experience

Bed Bugs Bed Bugs Bugs Roaches Dead Roaches Dirty Bugs

Insects

“The dirtiest hotel in

the world…bugs,

roaches and other

insects.” “Exoskeleton of the

Bed Bug found in

our bed!!”

“I want to warn that we only

stayed one night, and got a full

refund for our stay due to BED

BUGS! It was unfortunate

because we were having such a

nice time…”


Reviews/ratings are important but insights can also be derived by

combining these with other sources

Hoteliers’ internal sources of customer feedback

Internally collected customer feedback survey data

Internal call center data

Internal customer service email data

Travel journey and hotel stay experience reviews and ratings

From popular review-focused sites like TripAdvisor

From hoteliers’ own websites (publicly available)

From OTA websites like Expedia & Orbitz

Popular social media channels where the hotelier is mentioned

Twitter

Facebook b Online blogs

Travel review forums


An effective approach to address eWOM can be extremely impactful

1% increase in the hotel’s

“online reputation score”

can boost RevPAR by

almost 1%.

Addressing eWOM is critical to gain a competitive advantage by driving brand loyalty

and optimizing pricing strategy. Source : Cornell Hospitality Research

A one-point increase in a

hotel’s average user rating on

a 5-point scale makes potential

customers 13.5% more likely

to book that hotel.


What can you do?

Assess your current approach – reactive vs. proactive

Break organization silos – business/IT sponsors and cross-functional stakeholders

Have strategic roadmap but focus on tactical execution

approach to achieve incremental ROI

Decide on the platform-custom/SaaS/hybrid and

data management accelerators

Consider engaging a partner, to accelerate time

to market, by leveraging their platforms and

domain/company knowledge


Thank you!

Any questions?

Vinodh Balaraman

Principal

+1 609 419 4501

[email protected]

Documents

Vinodh Balaraman, Principal & Senior Partner · Map customer sentiment by stage of journey to hone in on issues at the property level Customer journey view of feedback can help you