Monday, June 29, 2009

TripAdvisor defends reliability of reviews


Yesterday’s Sunday Times said one hotelier in Spain claimed her ratings tumbled because of a critical review from a rival, while a former West Country hotelier claimed to write their own reviews.But a spokeswoman for Expedia-owned TripAdvisor said: ‘The vast majority of hotels understand the tremendous risk to their reputation and their business if they attempt to post fraudulent information on review sites like TripAdvisor. ‘As such, attempts of this nature are rare on TripAdvisor, but we take serious steps to penalise anyone caught attempting to trick the system.

‘In the event that a review is suspected to be fraudulent, it is immediately taken down, thereby affecting the business’s ranking in the TripAdvisor Popularity Index. 'Further measures to penalise those attempting to trick the system are handled on a case-by-case basis, but can include sending a warning letter to the property owners and posting a notice on TripAdvisor to warn travellers that a particular property is being investigated for potentially fraudulent activity.’

She also said the sheer volume of reviews for any individual property allows travellers to base their decisions on the opinions of many and provides an additional safeguard. TripAdvisor research shows the average traveller reads three pages of reviews when researching a hotel.

Every review is screened before posting and a team of quality assurance specialists investigates suspicious ones.Automated tools help identify attempts to subvert the system and its large community also help to police content.In total, the site features some 25m reviews and opinions.




Posted by RHR.COM at 3:24 PM 0 comments

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Twitter fastest growing website in UK


Micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter has emerged as the fastest growing major website in the UK in the past year.

Data from online research firm Hitwise shows that traffic to the site has increased 22-fold in the last 12 months.

During May 2009 www.twitter.com ranked as the 38th most visited website in the UK and the fifth most visited social network.

A year ago, in May 2008, it was the 969th most visited website and 84th most visited social network, according to Hitwise.

Research director Robin Goad said: "Twitter has been the fastest growing major website in the UK over the last 12 months, and certainly the most talked about.

"The noticeable thing about Twitter's growth is that the vast majority of it - 93% in fact - has occurred during 2009.

“Media coverage of the site has escalated significantly this year and high profile celebrity endorsements, by everyone from Stephen Fry to Ashton Kutcher, have come rolling in.

“If anything, the service is even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website.

“If people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers could be even higher."

One consequence of the high level of growth is that Twitter has become a key source of traffic to other websites, Hitwise said.

Twitter was the 30th biggest source of traffic for other sites in the UK last month, accounting for one in every 350 visits to a typical website.

More than half of this traffic (55.9%) is sent to other content-driven online media sites, such as social networks, blogs, and news and entertainment websites.

But only less than ten per cent of Twitter's downstream traffic is sent to transactional websites (i.e. travel, business and finance sites, plus online retailers).

By contrast, Google sends 30.7% of its traffic to transactional sites, while for Facebook the figure is 14.7%.

"Twitter has proven to be a fantastic source of traffic for content driven sites, and the media companies with a strong presence on the service are using it to great effect," said Goad.

"However, with one or two exceptions (most notably Dell, which claims to have generated $3m via Twitter), very few transactional websites have yet used Twitter to drive sales.

“During May, Google UK sent 365 times more traffic to transactional websites than Twitter.

“Given that Twitter has yet to settle on a business model that will take advantage of its huge, loyal user base, this is an issue that needs to be addressed by those running the company if they are to make the service a financial as well as a popular success."

Twitter was the 27th biggest source of traffic to News and Media - Print websites in the UK during May, and all of the main newspaper websites now have multiple Twitter feeds.

Goad said: "The key to having a successful Twitter presence is to engage the community.
“Twitter is a great viral marketing channel, and for many users the aim is to have their story 'retweeted' - i.e. passed on by other users - as many times as possible.

“Although all of the newspapers have multiple 'official' feeds, these tend to be bland and have very low 'retweet' rates.

“Journalists 'tweeting' themselves and engaging with the Twitter community typically have more success in creating viral stories."





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Monday, June 08, 2009

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Hotels in Spain 30% full for July and August


Falling hotel rates and cheap air fares to Spain and Greece will boost late bookings to these destinations, while others are effectively full or over-priced.
Hugh Morgan, Monarch operations and overseas purchasing director, told a Spanish tourism conference last week: ‘I know hoteliers now in Spain who still only have 30% occupancy for July and August. They are actually coming to us saying, ‘what price do you need to fill this?' ‘I have never seen that in the eons that I have been working in this industry. Normally, July and August are 70-80% sold by now.'

Speaking at 'The Year Ahead – A Year Of Change In The Travel Industry' seminar, part of the 'A Taste of Spain Travel 2009' trade show in London, Morgan said it was hard to predict if the lates market would rescue Spain’s summer – it is about 16% down year-on-year, while the UK market is generally about 11% down.‘It is so price-sensitive. If you get the prices wrong, you will not sell the holiday,’ he explained.

Fellow speaker Paul Evans, chief executive of Lowcost Group, said: ‘There has been a lot of PR spin about Turkey and Egypt. But do not anybody kid themselves – the vast majority of business will end up going to Spain.’He said fares to Turkey are around £300 while Spain is £80-£150 so any savings on hotel accommodation in Turkey are lost on the airline seat.

Evans added that 55% of his firm’s sales on 1 June were for June, reflecting the ‘incredibly late booking window’.He predicted bigger operators will hold their margins but said for online operators, the bed bank market has been ‘particularly brutal and competitive’.

Posted by RHR.COM at 1:57 PM 1 comments
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