RM2- Online session

Review pro Webinar: Reputation + Social Referral 

I didn't really learn much from the webinar - it confirmed more my knowledge on advocates, influencers and social media. The techniques are what many other industries do already : like following hashtags, paying influencers. What did surprise me was how few hotels answered that they were paying influencers: just 10% of the people responding to the question, as well as a whopping 17% of hotels never having asked a customer to write a review. 

What I found interesting, though, was when interviewing the Library Hotel Collection, was that good online reputation management is not a bandaid solution - your hotel service still has to be impeccable. ORM also enables smaller hotels to go beyond their borders and languages by inviting foreign influencers. It is a good, economical way of reaching a large audience. It doesn't require a dedicated person, but can be done by the whole team. 

I was also unaware that there were specific tools for finding and qualifying influencers.

These concepts make it easier and cheaper to market the hotel, but may not necessarily improve the overall guest experience. Though it may improve the visibility of the hotel to use influencers, this article , influencers can be expensive and it is difficult to quantify their effect on the market. However, people tend to trust peer reviews more, and "some 90% of customers trust peer recommendations and 70% trust consumer reviews, while only 33% trust ads, according to 2012 data from Nielsen" There is a need to have a good fit between the influencer, their followers and the hotel in order to have a successful campaign.

Here are the slides for the webinar.