Guest Review Rankings Report – Focus City: Atlanta GA

June 6, 2012 in Market Research by Hotel Compete

Since Hotel Compete launched the Guest Review Rankings Report a few weeks ago, we have already seen things beginning to change in the 25 markets that the report covers.  To bring these changes to life, and to show you what’s going on in the markets, we will be publishing regular updates that focus on one city – we begin this week with Atlanta, GA. 

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Hotel Reviews: The Lesson of Classless Imitation

June 6, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

A few weeks ago, Hotel Compete launched the Guest Review Rankings Report. This report was conceived following the huge response  to two previous articles about the analytical use of Hotel Guest Reviews. Right now the industry is – rightly – pre-occupied with “Reputation Management”.  But – as we argued in previous articles – the reviews themselves present an analytical opportunity that remains largely untapped.

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Hotel Reviews: Introducing the Guest Review Rankings Report

May 7, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

The hotel industry is currently obsessed with social media.  It is particularly obsessed with guest reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and the major Online Travel Agency (OTA) sites.  Review scores and volumes affect a hotel’s business, and – increasingly – executive compensation, as more and more hotel companies link general managers’ bonuses to their hotels’ performance on review sites.  This week we are delighted to launch a brand new regular report that provides hotels, analysts and other interested parties a brand new perspective on review scores across major lodging markets.

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Hotel Revenue Management: What You Probably Don’t Know About Rate Changes

April 18, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

Revenue Management (RM) and Pricing have been around now for decades.  Since US Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act back in 1978 RM has moved from airlines, to hotels and on to other industries.  34 years later hotels have RM and pricing systems, channel management tools and supporting data that make it easy to keep prices right where they need to be.

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How to Class Hotels. Meaningfully.

March 28, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

Last week we re-opened the analytically important issue of Hotel Classification.  In that article we explained how Chain Scale categories are not specific enough for hotel performance analysis. In this article we share the results of a major analysis and classification of more than 60,000 hotels, and demonstrate how an analytical “Booker’s Eye View” of the market leads to a better understanding of hotel classes, brands and markets.

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Hotel Classification and Hotel Performance Analysis

March 19, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

A few months ago we published an article about the way that the industry categorizes hotels for the purpose of hotel performance analysis.  In it we argued that our industry depends too heavily on “top-down” forms of classification, like chain scale.  Specifically, broad categorizations like “Upscale” and “Mid-Market” fail to account for inconsistency within brands; and fail to provide useful insight into the choices that bookers are faced with in a competitive and diverse hotel marketplace.

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A Thanksgiving Thought on the New World of Hotel Ecommerce

November 21, 2011 in Journal by Hotel Compete

It’s almost time for Thanksgiving. As we prepare to commemorate the Pilgrims who in 1621 survived their first, devastating winter in the new world, thoughts turn - perhaps surprisingly – to hotel ecommerce.

Following last week’s PhoCusWright conference the blogosphere and twitterverse have been awash with stories about hotel companies and their relationships with their ecommerce partners.  But this year something’s different.  Change is in the air, and it portends an interesting 2012.  As we wind down to the annual feast of turkey, football and ghastly travel experiences, here are a few thoughts on the changing tide in travel distribution.

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Digging Deeper: Hotel Review Scores, Hotel Class, and Hotel Performance

October 31, 2011 in Journal by Hotel Compete

A couple of months ago we published an article: Hotel Reviews – The Hotel Industry Must Learn from the Wisdom of Crowds, which discussed the relevancy of user review scores.  The article highlighted a fallacy in current industry commentary: that review scores are too biased or unreliable to be used for analytical purposes.  In this post we dig deeper into the insight that you can get when you really understand hotel review scores.

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The Rearview Mirror, and Why it’s Hurting the Hotel Industry

October 5, 2011 in Journal by Hotel Compete

It’s always encouraging to find kindred spirits.  This is particularly true when industry commentators swim against the tide with controversial opinions that you also hold.  Last week we were delighted to read an excellent account of this year’s Lodging Industry Conference, provided by the hotel industry’s “Dr Doom”, Joel Ross, founder of Citadel Realty Advisors. 

The article, which can be accessed here, is a must-read for anybody who follows hotel industry performance.  It voices a mixture of skepticism and amazement at the forecasts provided by various industry “data people” at the event.  The presentations apparently found consensus on the following view: because July has been so wonderful for the industry, the outlook for 2012 looks rosy.

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