Helping hotels harness social media

There are now countless places out there for consumers to voice their opinions about brands large and small, and hotels are by no means exempt. In fact, online reviews are now the most critical measure of guest satisfaction and the top factor influencing where travelers decide to stay, according to Revinate. That, in turn, is why the San Francisco company recently unveiled a hotel-specific service that aims to bring structure, performance tracking and actionable guidance to that never-ending stream of social media. Launched in March, Revinate collects every review, news story, blog post, photo, video and social media mention of its client hotels and presents them in a single intuitive dashboard that’s accessible online. Revinate can also do the same for competitors’ reviews and social media activity, giving clients new competitive insight into their relative strengths and weaknesses. Its Social Media Scorecard, in turn, converts those online reviews into a detailed guest satisfaction report, tracking key performance metrics and competitive benchmarks. The tool’s powerful analytics, meanwhile, provide real-time, easy-to-use reports that highlight what’s important, with charts, exportable data, competitive intelligence and flexible options. Finally—and perhaps most important—is that, similar to Brands in Public, Revinate also makes it easy for hotels to join the conversation by responding to reviews and communicating with consumers via social media. TweetConcierge, for example, is Revinate’s hotel-specific Twitter client with features designed exclusively for hotels, including the ability to track Twitter campaigns and measure click and sales activity generated across multiple promotional tweets. Revinate clients include Peninsula Hotels, Trump Hotel Collection, Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, Kimpton Hotels, InterContinental, Andaz, White Lodging and Peabody Hotel Group. A video tour is available on screenr. The service’s pricing is based a hotel’s size and average daily rate, approximating the value of one incremental booking per month, Revinate says. There can hardly be any brands left that doubt the power of social media. Will they be the victim of that transparency tyranny, or will they turn it into transparency triumph and—indeed—foreverism, as our sister site would call it? That’s up to them, and how actively—and proactively—they get involved. As Revinate says, “millions of travelers are talking, and hoteliers must listen.” (Related: SeatGuru for hotel rooms — Analytics tools help music bands uncover local demand.)