The Innkeeping Blog

Recently we announced a new partnership with TripAdvisor that allows only innkeepers in the B&B industry to enjoy 50% off rack rate pricing for their Business Listings program.  In addition, those innkeepers who are not members of PAII who sign up during our promotion (ends April 8), will get a free Silver Membership in PAII as an additional incentive.  TripAdvisor’s Business Listings program allows property owners to add their phone number, an email link and a link to their own property’s web site to their TripAdvisor property page.  This may seem like a minor addition to your TripAdvisor page, but it could be very meaningful in capturing bookings you otherwise might have lost.

Since announcing the promotion with TripAdvisor, the PAII office has fielded numerous questions.  I’m using my column this quarter to do a little Q&A about the program and how this does or does not change the nature of our relationship with TripAdvisor.

Is this really worth it?
Especially in 2010, here’s why I think it is in fact worth the investment.  First and foremost, the price will double next year, so now is the time to give it a shot and test the effectiveness of having the added contact information and links on your TripAdvisor page – especially the direct link to your web site.  To that point, you invest a lot of your marketing energy and dollars in your own web site.  You want potential guests getting to your site as quickly as possible, so you have the best chance of keeping their interest high in your property.  And, you know you’re going to receive the highest possible net rate when people book directly with you.  It naturally follows that a visitor to your TripAdvisor page – if she likes what she sees – will have a better chance of making it to your own web site if a link is right there in front of her.  I call this the “stickiness factor,” meaning you want impressed TripAdvisor visitors to stick with you and not move on to check out the competition.  Also, with this new link, you can now start tracking the amount of traffic coming to your web site from your TripAdvisor page.  This doesn’t reveal how many people are viewing your TripAdvisor page, but it does tell you how strong of a referring site TripAdvisor might be.  We are hearing from many innkeepers that their TripAdvisor link is among their top referring links.

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Sorry for the long post, but it’s been a while since I updated the innkeeping community on my discussions with TripAdvisor.  For those of you unaware of what PAII has been doing, I have been representing on behalf of innkeepers some requests for change on the TripAdvisor site.   The issues below represent a selection of matters I have been spotlighting for TripAdvisor staff during quarterly meetings at their headquarters outside Boston.

Change and progress are taking time, but I’m glad to report that some thing are changing and will continue to change.  The TripAdvisor staff have been willing to listen and engage in meaningful conversation every step of the way since I became involved. 

The work we are doing keeps the B&B industry visible in their eyes. 

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Rick Wolf of The B&B Team shared with me a recent NY Times article about the online review site, Yelp. Some innkeepers are beginning to see reviews of their properties on this site. From what I can tell, and what this article explains in more details, is that Yelp gives business owners little or no opportunities to defend themsevles against any reviews. They don’t even offer an opportunity for management responses! Read the article here.

The CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, says his top priority is “to make sure the community (of reviewers) is protected and can share without fear of being publicly spat on.” Here is where Mr. Stoppelman is off-base. Since reviewers are anonymous, there is no risk of being publicly spat on, because no one knows who the reviewers are. The business owners are the ones who bear 100% of the chance of being publicly spat on. This imbalance is a major, unfortunate flaw in such review sites.

Stoppleman even says, “Business owners want to control their reputation, and we’re just not going to let that happen.” All I can say in response is a dumbfounded, “wow.”

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Today I interviewed Mr. Charlie Kennedy, an attorney well-versed in the issues of cyberlaw and customer content on web sites, as part of our new series of Innkeeping Industry Interviews. Charlie will be speaking at the upcoming Innkeeping Show as part of our general session on “Mastering Online Reviews and Reputation Management.”

I asked Charlie to speak with me, and to speak at the conference, because innkeepers often ask me good questions about the ability for anonymous people to possibly (and actually) leave defaming remarks on web sites about their inns.

What protects review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp!, Amazon, etc. from libel suits, when defaming reviews appear on their sites?

What recourse does an innkeeper have with regard to seeking a judgment against someone who is making false allegations about their property on a review site?

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