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Jun 18, 2007 -- Cheap Market Research

Smart companies are starting to use blogs as a cheap way to do market research. Tripadvisor.com is a particular website, which hotels hate, that travelers can post their feelings on. If you stayed at the nicest hotel with great customer service, you can tell your fellow travelers that. If it was just the opposite, you can tell them that too. It is funny though, that even though this could be used to the advantage of hotel chains, many don't use it. This is totally free market research for them. The oddest thing is that if someone has a bad experience, and it is fixed the first time, the person becomes a more loyal customer to that business. So if these hotels would just listen to their free box of customer complaints, maybe they would create more loyal customers.

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What others are saying

  • Right and Wrong
    Hi there,

    Well, you're right that Tripadvisor can provide free feedback for hotel.
    However, the negative aspects of Tripadvisor outweigh the positives.
    Consider the following:
    1. A review can be left by someone who never stayed at the hotel.
    2. A review can be left by the hotel owner posing as a guest.
    3. A review can be left by a hotel's competitors.
    4. The hotel management are very limited in what they can say in their management response.
    5. The reviews are not checked by Tripadvisor for fact.

    I own a small hotel and out of the 6 reviews we have, only two of them are from genuine guests. One review was left by what I suspect is one of our competitors. Two reviews were left by guests who tried to blackmail us (give us a discount or we'll leave a bad review). One review was left by someone who was going through a marriage break-down when they stayed with us and they were probably insane if judged by their behaviour. So, I wonder how much all those fake reviews have cost me. Do you agree that Tripadvisor runs a fair system?

    Put it like this: if you think Tripadvisor is fair, then you would also agree that it would be fair if I were to tell the police that you were a pedophile (even though presumably you're not), then not allow you to defend yourself in court.
    It's an either/or situation.
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