Hotels are a unique product to sell, and something millions of humans care about. No other industry has a potential guest, client, or customer research what they're buying via reviews more than the hotel industry. Which is why continually generating up-to-date reviews about your property should be of the upmost importance… and why we, as hoteliers and developers, focused on building Reviewstay first… (We have 6 other digital tools for the hotel industry in the works).
While many people will tell you to play the direct booking vs. OTA booking game, which we don't disagree with, we feel that most hoteliers focus there first, without any regard to how their guests are booking.
We get it. We're in those meetings every month, we see those commission checks to third parties fly out of our pockets. But this is why reviews on these platforms matter.
You may wonder, why aren't we trying to push more hotel reviews to our direct booking site?
Great question. Firstly, a review on a direct booking site is what we call a verified stay review. All of the reviews on those direct and OTA sites are left from a verified link after the guest checks out. This leaves a gap in review placement for those sites that are public… and are being seen much more often than a verified review is. Facebook, Google, Tripadvisor, and Yelp all generate their own visitors, and if your reviews are dated and/or slim, you're leaving revenue on the table. Matter of fact, when we started utilizing a more primitive version of what Reviewstay is back in 2019 for our properties who hadn't seen fresh reviews on Facebook and Yelp in half a decade, those channels started producing more revenue.
And the best part is…
These four social media sites all generate direct bookings. Its not too absurd to think that a Reviewstay subscription could get your hotel a 30x return each month.
And because im a data guy, here's my breakdown.
- Lets say you use Reviewstay Pro, a $56.99 per month subscription.
- To obtain a 30x return on your Reviewstay investment, you would need to generate $1,709.70
- if your ADR is $145, that's only 12 additional nights booked.