Is a good Tripadvisor profile now more important than a good hotel website?

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I have just stayed at a wonderful homestay on the Malaysian island of Langkawi. My traditional wooden rice cottage had been saved from demolition, transported here and rebuilt. The food was amazing homecooking using produce from the surrounding paddies and farms. It deserved its Tripadvisor ranking as the second best place to stay on the island.

But its website was almost non existent. Three photos, all of beach nowhere near the lodge, and no relevant copy. It was clear our hosts had no idea about SEO or web design. But a Tripadvisor Certificate of Excellence for the last three years suggested they did know something about running a rather special lodge.

Throughout January I have been observing how our efforts to communicate responsible tourism are changing. Everywhere across Langkawi all sorts of different places promote themselves as ‘homestays’. A term that until recently was a novel point of difference for authentic, community-focussed tourism is now a debased ‘brandwagon’ to leap on. It has been added to the greenwash bin along with ‘ecotourism’, ‘local’, and any other term for whom mainstream acceptance strikes the death knell for validity.

Nowhere have I found this to be truer than in Georgetown, the UNESCO World Heritage city on Penang. It’s a great place to be a tourist. Inspiring architecture. Innovative street art. Inventive food. But the more locals I spoke to, the more it was clear that not everyone was so enamoured.

The tourism promoters spoke proudly of growth. They said young people were returning to a city that had been stagnating. But when I asked them about capacity, whether there might ever be enough trendy coffee shops, now that there is ‘Selfie Coffee” on one corner, and 3D Coffee on another, they just smiled. And in Georgetown, the word ‘heritage’ is as overused and debased as ‘homestay’ and ‘eco’ are elsewhere.

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By contrast, local critics spoke of people being evicted to make way for heritage hotels, and of how some of the same traditional craftsmen used to promote Georgetown’s ‘intangible heritage’ are no longer able to afford the rent. The dispute was best summed up by a volunteer at the Penang Heritage Trust who told me: “For them [Penang Tourism], heritage is a means to more tourism. For us tourism needs to be a way to preserve our heritage’.

While there, I stayed in one of the few inns that everyone I spoke to agreed deserved the word ‘heritage’, thanks to the sensitive and sustainable work they have done restoring a 200yr old Chinese Shophouse. And although in this case they did also have a great website, again I discovered and committed to it thanks to its presence on Tripadvisor. Because while just about every hotel and lodge in Georgetown bandied around ‘heritage’ on its website, it was only though deciphering the TA reviews that I felt I got beyond spin and the parroted buzzwords and closer to a richer, more nuanced version of the real story.

 Has Tripadvisor become the Google of travel?

A decade or so ago we learned how to read Google listings to find what we want. Increasingly Tripadvisor is assuming this position as the ubiquitous point of reference. Once again we are learning how to trawl through the multitude of reviews in order to pick up the authentic trends and patterns against the occasional flashes of vitriol. It is the point of reference.

Yes, an efficient website helps (or rather an efficient booking engine), but if I were a small hotel, I would pay most attention to delivering the quality of service and experience that drives good Tripadvisor reviews, and in the growing number of countries where Greenleaders is present, striving to be recognised here too. Recent research by Harvard and Cornell has shown such properties score on average 20% higher in their TripAdvisor rating than non-GreenLeader hotels.

One final pair of related points. Both places I stayed took great care when communicating with me by email. Every time I received a note responding to my latest query, I found myself telling my wife about the lovely message I had received. We felt sure these were good places to stay. And the personal attention present in the emails was what we received when we arrived. The online and offline worlds are increasingly blurred.

Tourism businesses should approach same Tripadvisor the same way. While the site’s user generated focus means others write much of your story for you, there is still an opportunity to set yourself apart. A business owner can reply to as many reviews as they choose. Each reply is an opportunity to tell part of your story and display your own personality, to show how you deal with dissatisfied customers as well as with those who love what you are about. It is a window through which responsible and responsive companies can flourish.

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Jeremy Smith is a writer, speaker and sustainable tourism consultant. He is co-founder of Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency, an initiative that supports tourism organisations in declaring a climate emergency and working together to reduce their carbon emissions in line with the Science Based Targets. He is the author of Transforming Travel - realising the potential of sustainable tourism (2018), and co-founder of Travindy.com, the travel industry sustainable tourism website news site. He consults widely on sustainable tourism strategy and communication, with recent clients including Bruges Ommeland, GSTC, English National Parks, Tripadvisor, the Travel Foundation, and the European Travel Commission. He is a member of Travalyst’s Independent Advisory Board and was a member of Rotterdam’s International Advisory Board in 2019, helping develop a new vision for the city’s tourism.

7 comments

  1. ayakoezaki says:

    Great to hear about the personal and thoughtful email exchanges you’ve had with those lodges. I’ve also had many positive experiences with operators and accommodation providers who really took the time and care to make sure I had all the information I needed and to share their passion for the experiences they offer. These emails became a big part of my memories of those places, and also an important factor that influenced my wanting to leave positive reviews for the businesses.

    I think that travel & tourism businesses – large or small, and whether they have great websites or not – benefit from doing those small things that make visitors want to share positive reviews, because those are the things that make the businesses great, and their experiences memorable (great customer service, attention to detail, genuinely caring about travelers’ interests).

    Regarding the TripAdvisors profile vs. own website question, my guess is that it’s mostly a matter of scale and how far/wide a business can afford to spread its marketing efforts (without “spreading too thin”). For a small business, focusing on getting reliable levels of traffic from established websites like TA may be more practical than trying to achieve meaningful reach through its own website. But at the same time, I think that it’d probably also be worthwhile to invest some time and effort into building an attractive website (it doesn’t need to be fancy) with a targeted approach to building relevance and search strength in a particular niche over time.

    • Jeremy Smith says:

      I agree Ayako. A small business can drive good TA reviews by a) delivering good service and b) encouraging its guests to post reviews. Attempting to get its website well positioned on google is far harder, regardless of how pretty the pictures are or how well written the copy is. The work needed to get its site onto the top pages of search results is far greater, and is additional to its core work of ‘being a good hotel’, whereas most of the work necessary to drive TA reviews is done by focussing on being a good business.

  2. Hotel CO2 says:

    The fact that Green Leaders hotels receive higher Tripadvisor scores could be because they are generally better run: i.e. management does a good job of ensuring guests satisfaction and is also aware of the operational and reputational advantages of being green. Managers that measure and pay attention to guest satisfaction surveys are probably the ones who also measure their hotel’s carbon emissions and manage their energy consumption.

  3. Cecilie Clausen says:

    Hi Jeremy, I found you article because I was looking for exactly sich a homestay, could you tell me the name of the place? Thanks Cecilie

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