WHICH IS BRITAIN’S best hotel? Step forward the 100-room Hilton Garden Inn located in the centre of Aberdeen, a mid-market hotel firmly focused on business travellers to the city involved in the North Sea oil industry.
This Hilton Garden Inn – one of five similarly HGI-branded hotels in the UK and more than 500 globally – is rated the UK’s finest by online travel agency Expedia. Not only that, the hotel is ranked fourth best in the world – or at least among those 130,000 hotel properties on Expedia’s database. The next highest ranked UK hotel was the five-star Intercontinental on London’s Park Lane – rated in 31st place globally.
With the best will in the world it is hard to believe the Hilton Garden Inn in Aberdeen – whose facilities include a microwave in the lobby according to Expedia – really deserves the accolade bestowed on it. Expedia says its Insiders’ Select annual global listings are based on “verified” guest reviews from travellers who had stayed at the hotel within the previous six months, along with the views of “hundreds of experts” in top destinations worldwide, who provided their “insight and first-hand knowledge” of their region’s best hotels.
Certainly, the Hilton property is worth considering for those headed to Aberdeen, although the city has a good collection of business hotels to choose from, given the importance of the oil industry – including two other Hilton hotels, along with four Holiday Inns. Aberdeen, moreover, is an established destination for those whose business is focused on the North Sea, with its business hotels enjoying a high-level of repeat bookings from regular travellers.
But those corporate buyers and business travellers who have to find hotels in less obvious locations face rather more of a dilemma. This particularly applies to those in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who do not have the resources, experience or expertise of larger companies with full-time travel managers and travel management companies (TMCs) onboard. “Traditional TMC clients are also more likely to have corporate rates in place, meaning their travellers are obliged to stay with a preferred hotel chain, so any ‘chatter’ online is irrelevant,” points out Ryan Johnson, corporate land project manager for FCm Travel Solutions and Corporate Traveller.
It is also sometimes forgotten that the bulk of business travellers are not often in a position to stay in an easily-identifiable branded hotel outside the main urban areas, either for reasons of cost or simply lack of information of what is suitable. For them – or those back in the office charged with booking the accommodation – the choices can be bewildering: hotel consultancy STR Global reported earlier this year that there were almost 4 million hotel rooms available every day across the UK and Europe. Of these, the majority were found in unbranded properties, not normally available on a GDS or other booking system.
News travels fast
Of course, the ‘game-changer’ in the 21st century has been the internet, providing an unparalleled database of hotels and other accommodation throughout the world. But the world wide web has also brought with it some significant changes in attitude among road warriors, especially the younger generation of business travellers who are unwilling to accept lower standards from the hospitality industry – and are prepared to use social media to tell others about it.
Latest research, for example, from the influential JD Power & Associates survey of almost 62,000 North American hotel guests over the past year, found a sharp deterioration in satisfaction with their hotel experience – to its lowest level for seven years.
Yet given the investment and improvements in hotel technology over that same period – such as more comfortable beds, improved communications, and healthier food and beverage offerings – hoteliers believe that “everyone has become a critic” and are only too willing to turn to Twitter, Facebook and other user-generated review platforms, such as Trip Advisor, to make their opinions known.
Trip Advisor trips up
This is not necessarily good news for those buyers and travellers seeking unbiased, relevant and useful information about hotels, given the egregious examples of how online reviews can be manipulated. For example: earlier this year Trip Advisor – the global leader in user-generated reviews of hotels and travel in general – was rebuked by the
UK’s Advertising Standards Authority over its publicity claims to publish “reviews you can trust” when there was potential for misrepresentation. As the ASA’s chief executive Guy Parker put it: “Don’t major on trustworthiness if fake reviews can appear.” Trip Advisor, unsurprisingly, was not happy with the ASA, arguing it remained committed to “providing a trusted resource for travellers”.
But how far can buyers and travellers really trust third-party information on hotels? Traditionally, information on the quality and value of hotels was provided by the star grading systems or hard-copy publications. Yet in the second decade of the 21st century, star ratings and published guides look out of the loop compared with the plethora of online information available (see panel, above). The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, in its tourism review last year, effectively washed its hands of the star grading systems for hotels, accepting that the many attempts to impose a unified and widely accepted standard had failed.
Current Whitehall thinking is that, whatever its faults, the user-generated review system is potentially more useful to travellers than star ratings, although acknowledging that these still have a role to play when produced by independent groups such as the AA or RAC. But it does not believe this is something in which the government in future should become involved.
Yet the leading hotel chains have also started to shift their position on user-generated reviews over the past year. Having initially viewed them as an unregulated threat and open to manipulation, some hotels have now changed their minds and are embracing uncensored online reviews, albeit carried on their own websites rather than third-party ones.
The reason is that the chains believe potential guests will have more faith in the legitimacy of their online reviews, given that they will be restricted to travellers who have definitely stayed in the hotel under review. Some hotels further limit reviews to members of their loyalty schemes, arguing that this helps other business travellers as these reviews will typically be more focused on guests who know the chain well. Cynics, however, argue that such reviewers are more likely to be favourable.
Others, notably Four Seasons, provide direct access on their websites to uncensored reviews carried on Facebook, Trip Advisor and Twitter. The reasoning is that this appears more transparent to potential guests, with the hotel confident of receiving more positive reviews than negative ones.
Online reputation management, moreover, is increasingly seen as vital to the hospitality sector. Last month analytical consultancy Trust You agreed a deal with Trip Advisor to gain access to its online hotel reviews in real-time to provide its clients – ranging from Accor and Marriott to Movenpick and the Ritz in London – with instant data on what was being said about their hotels.
“Social media and online reviews are here to stay and hoteliers must embrace online traveller feedback,” suggested Trust You chief executive and co-founder Benjamin Jost.
Choices, choices
But technology is going faster and further in giving buyers and travellers more choice in booking rooms. Leading Hotels of the World, which represents upmarket properties in most major cities, is reportedly working on a booking tool to allow buyers and travellers to choose actual rooms when booking, not just a general category or grade. This could be launched on LHW’s new website, due to be unveiled later this year.
Other new sources of hotel data include start-ups such as Oyster.com (backed by the Travel Channel), which utilises specialist writers to personally visit hotels and review them – an opposite strategy to the user-generated Trip Advisor review model.
Yet for all the emergence of new ways of finding out about hotel rooms, some things never change: a recent survey by Hotelschool The Hague, a hospitality management university, found that 70 per cent of travellers rated room cleanliness as the most important factor they sought when choosing a hotel room – and the one they were most likely to complain about online if their room was found to be less than spotless.