The recently released 2017 Global Hotel Reputation Benchmark Report reveals countries’ hotel performance in terms of guest reviews. The report provides benchmarking guidelines for hoteliers, so they can assess and improve their own performances. This far-reaching study analyzed 70 million published online guest reviews worldwide over the last two years –nearly 40 million of those in 2016 alone.
The report, which is released by Revinate, the software as a service (SaaS) company, finds out that on average, hotels
* receive 27.7 reviews per month
* respond to 27.9% of all reviews
* respond to 27.1% of one-star reviews
* respond to 31.6% of five-star reviews
80% of all reviews are 4- and 5-star reviews, while less than 10% of reviews are 1 or 2 stars.
78% of all reviews come from the top four review sites: Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Google, and Hotels.com. According to the data, the dominant player in the hotel review space is Booking.com, hosting 39 percent of all reviews worldwide. TripAdvisor remains second, losing some ground in the past year to just under 25 percent of global reviews.
The other trend for this year is the continued effects of consolidation in the OTA and review site space. Larger sites are continuing to garner market share, edging out smaller sites. It’s also worth pointing out that because the Priceline Group owns Booking.com, Agoda, and OpenTable, it now hosts 43% of all online hotel reviews. Expedia, with Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Wotif, owns over 10%.
The section on the average review scores by region and by established and emerging markets shows an upward movement across the board, proving that travelers are becoming more comfortable posting reviews.
In terms of review volume, while the US and the UK were the two largest markets in 2016, their annual growth actually slowed down. However, reviews for those two countries alone exceeded the 15.1-million mark in 2016, which means that there’s a trove of valuable feedback for US and UK hoteliers to respond and act upon. In that regard, savvy hoteliers should analyze which stages of the stay cycle are more widely reviewed and actively use guest reviews to promote their properties and enhance the other parts of their clients’ experiences.
Looking at established markets – those with more than 100,000 annual reviews – hotels in China (4.42), Greece (4.34) and South Africa (4.26) received the highest ratings, while the United Kingdom (4.05), the United States (3.99) and France (3.94) closed the ranking. Scores grew compared to 2015 in all markets except from China, which took a 0.2% dip. Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil and the US experienced the greatest improvements compared to the previous year.
Asia (4.28), Europe (4.24) and Latin America (4.24) were the regions with the highest average scores in 2016, followed by the Middle East and Africa (4.12), North America (4.09) and Oceania (4.08).
However, in terms of annual increase Middle Eastern and African (+1.5%) and North American properties (+1.2%) experienced the strongest improvements, while the remaining four regions grew below the 1-percent mark.
