Las Suites is a 91-room hotel located in the heart of Polanco, an upscale neighborhood in Mexico City. The area is peppered with embassies, art galleries, and transnational corporations. Salomon Mizarhi, Hotel Director, explains, “This is a competitive market, composed of hotels from top global and national brands. We stand out by offering a unique apartment-style stay without compromising on customer service.”
But given the competitive nature of the market, the hotel staff knew that to get ahead they would have to do more than rely on excellent customer service. They needed to invest in their online reputation and to do so, they needed to partner with a company with proven technology solutions built specifically for the hospitality industry. They selected Revinate as their partner of choice given the company’s successful client base in Latin America and customer-focused culture.
Before signing up for Revinate service, Mizarhi relied on manual approaches for managing the hotel’s reputation. After his first demo of Revinate’s Guest Feedback Suite he recognized that there were much more effective ways to capture, track and manage guest feedback that would enable him to learn from his feedback in order to improve operations and drive new bookings. Over the next six months, he set out to tackle his challenges around guest feedback.
Challenge #1: Increase Guest Feedback Volume
Marco Gonzalez, Revenue Manager of Las Suites, says that before signing up for Revinate service, it was a challenge to convince guests to leave feedback for the hotel. He explains, “Today’s traveler doesn’t want to take the time to fill out a little paper card at the front desk. We were using an antiquated approach that was causing us to lose out on valuable data about our guests’ experience. Las Suites needed an easy-to-use, interactive solution that engaged our guests.”
Las Suites replaced its comment card solution with On-Site Surveys, Revinate’s on-property iPad solution. The hotel also began using Revinate Post-Stay Surveys, a solution that prompts guest to provide feedback following their stay. Built in conjunction with TripAdvisor, the survey captures specific data that the hotel is seeking, but also contains a standard TripAdvisor review that is automatically submitted to the review site for publishing.
With the Guest Feedback Suite, Las Suites is able to reach the modern traveler and increase its feedback volume. After one month of using On-Site Surveys and Post-Stay Surveys, the monthly feedback volume for Las Suites increased by almost 290%. Within six months, it increased by 710%, proving that traditional comment cards can’t compete with modern solutions. Today, Las Suites is at the top of its comp set for feedback volume.
Challenge #2: Analyze Guest Feedback
The Las Suites operational team quickly found that the Guest Feedback Suite did more than drive more feedback. It gave them a more in-depth understanding of the guest experience, and it gave them the ability to easily respond to feedback. “We are now able to monitor and analyze our internal feedback side-by-side with the public feedback on review sites and OTAs,” says Gonzalez. “Because we now have a way to look at all of our data in one place, we can easily and immediately identify areas of opportunity to improve across our entire operation.”
Revinate’s On-Site Surveys has also become an essential service recovery solution for Las Suites. Gonzalez explains, “Recently, a client left a comment on our On-Site Survey regarding wi-fi issues on his floor. Revinate’s software notified us of the issue immediately, via SMS. That same afternoon, we contacted our Internet Service Provider and we were able to fix the problem immediately.” Real-time service recovery has allowed Las Suites to improve loyalty, which is particularly important for Las Suites because so many of its customers are repeat guests.
Before using Revinate, Las Suites took a manual approach to analyzing its guest feedback, which was error-prone and time consuming. Now, with Revinate’s, sentiment analysis technology, the Las Suites team can easily spot trends and understand guest preferences in both online reviews and solicited surveys. As a result, Las Suites is able to make smart operational changes that have the greatest impact on guest satisfaction.
“The data in Revinate clearly showed that we had an issue with traffic noise. We were receiving a lot of comments about it both in online reviews and in our post-stay feedback. With no doubt that the issue was affecting our online reputation, and thus our future bookings and guest satisfaction, we invested in soundproof windows that block 85% of all sound,” says Gonzalez. “The data we got from Revinate gave us the confidence to make this significant financial investment, and it paid off. Since replacing the windows, we have received no more complaints about traffic noise and our ratings have improved.”
Challenge #3: Improve Operational Efficiency
The operational team at Las Suites has saved a drastic amount of time by using Revinate’s Guest Feedback Suite. Salomon says, “Before we started using the software service, we had to go to each review site one by one to read and respond to comments. Now, we can do this in one place.”
Salomon also loves Revinate’s free mobile app because it allows the staff at Las Suites to take immediate action on guest feedback. He says, “A good or bad review can appear online at any time. It is fantastic that we can receive alerts on mobile or via email. When a new review is posted, the app notifies me immediately, and I can delegate to my team accordingly to ensure proper and immediate follow up.”
Results
By using the Guest Feedback Suite to increase guest feedback volume, get better feedback data, and improve operational efficiency, Las Suites was able to improve guest satisfaction in the process. When looking at all guest feedback, the average review scores for the hotel increased by 21%, from a 3.7 to a 4.5, on a 5 point scale, which made a big difference on the TripAdvisor Popularity Index, which is becoming a critical metric for many hotels.
Within three months of publishing reviews to TripAdvisor, Las Suites had experienced a 766% increase in its TripAdvisor review volume. This, combined with its improving review scores, allowed the hotel to climb from #134 to #90 on the TripAdvisor Popularity Index. In six months, Las Suites had risen to #51, a total of 81 places.
Salomon is very pleased with the success that Revinate enabled in just six months. “Our month-by-month progress on TripAdvisor reflects how the Guest Feedback Suite has become a cornerstone of our hotel’s operations. With Revinate, we have established a complete feedback cycle that allows us to continuously improve our guest satisfaction. Las Suites is staying competitive in a tough market, and our ratings and guest satisfaction are better than ever before,” he says. Salomon and the team at Las Suites look forward to continued success with Revinate’s Guest Feedback Suite.