Postcard from Bishkek

I subscribe to a number of email newsletters and the start my day always involves perusing them to see what is new.  There are newsletters from a number of news agencies, alerting me to stories of interest about events here in Kyrgyzstan as well as back home, about different aspects of running a business, (such as Personnel Management, Marketing, Health and Safety), about tourism developments in events in Tourism and the Hospitality industry … and various types of Trivia such as “what happened on this day in History”, or the daily Biography published by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

On Friday, I was surprised that virtually all of the newsletters that cover the Hospitality industry contained references to a particular survey which was very interesting: Hotel Guests list their rants and raves for 2012, a study of over a million randomly selected comments written within the last year on over 200 sites such as review sites such as Tripadvisor, and social media such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Yelp.  It was so interesting that I thought I might refer to it in a postcard … I must confess, however, that I am a little confused about what I exactly I can quote from them and what is privileged and protected by copyright.

One of the articles, for example, said “This is an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval …  is not permitted.”  It was a very short “Exclusive Feature” article with a few introductory paragraphs, two “Top Ten Lists” and three short paragraphs offering interpretations of the key results.  It did, however, include a link to the website of the organization who carried out the survey, (“TrustYou“), and so I went to have a look – after all they might have included a bit more detail.

Apparently, the company offer services, especially to those of us in the hospitality industry, in “reputation management” … for example, analysing comments on review sites and social media, but also offering on-line customer satisfaction surveys and other marketing tools.  Their team cover over twenty languages and they claim to have over 10,000 clients in more sixty countries – from large chains of outlets to individual hotels and some technology companies and destination marketing organizations.

The funny thing was that the Press Release on their website was marked as Copyright with “All rights reserved“, (which struck me as odd because, usually, large chunks of the text in a Press Release are often quoted verbatim in the media), but the blog post it linked to with slightly more information, (for example: featuring Top Twenty lists not Top Ten), was not.

 

Anyway, the interesting thing was that amongst the most common Rants, were complaints and comments about:

• unprofessional and incompetent service, (there was another category for “unfriendly service” and another catch all, “Bad service”);
• the rooms:
• • the size of rooms (that is: too small – especially a small bathroom);
  • noisy rooms;
  • cleanliness, (that is, a dirty room … or a dirty bathroom);
  • “old” rooms … but, to be honest, I didn’t understand that one
• the price level (i.e. they considered the accommodation to be overpriced – and an expensive breakfast got singled out for special attention);
• the food, (a poor breakfast in particular and later in the list there was “tasteless food”);
•  a “bad bed”, (I’m not sure if that means it was too hard … or too soft … or maybe too small …  or maybe with a lumpy mattress);
• a poor location, and there was a separate category for those that were remote or hard to find;
• no internet access, and
• bad parking.

 

Amongst the Raves, as might be expected,  were many of the opposites:

• Great service (friendly professional, efficient – strange that in the rant’s they were treated separately but in the Raves they were grouped together);
• the location;
• a “good room”, although, once again, I wasn’t sure what that meant, nor the “new room” mentioned further down the list … also listed in separate entries were
• • a clean room or
  • a large room
  • a quiet room
• a good bathroom
• a good bed
• “great food” and in particular a “great breakfast”;
• a “good, affordable” price,
• a nice view
• a good pool
• free internet
• Good sauna and wellness facilities
• easy parking available – especially if was free parking and
• an efficient reception and
• a new hotel

 

Although the articles said that over a million comments had been reviewed … according to the figures given, these “top twenty” lists only referred to about six hundred thousand comments – just under a hundred thousand “Rants“ and just under half a million “Raves“.  Assuming that most of the reviews would have made more than one comment – it suggests that there were a lot of other comments about a range of other things …

Interestingly, however, the number of Raves far outnumbered the number of Rants … which seems to go against the old adage that “it is easier to criticize than to praise”.  In general there seemed to be about 4 raves to every rant …

In both cases, rants and raves, about a fifth of the comments referred to each:

• the level and quality of service,
• the rooms themselves and
• the food …

The other facilities didn’t receive that much attention although a good location and nice views were highly appreciated when it came to the raves.  Although the rooms came in for some considerable attention – about one fifth of the comments, the beds themselves only rated something like three percent of the comments.

One thing that surprised me in particular was that the internet didn’t attract as much attention as I would have anticipated given the amount of debate there has been on the question of hotel charges for internet access as opposed to “Free wi-fi” – There were just four percent of the comments on the topic of internet access and although they amounted to three percent of the rants, and just one percent of the raves, there were actually twice as many raves as rants.

Price was also not as contentious an issue as I had anticipated accounting for just four percent of the comments – and although the opinion that the accommodation was overpriced was the third highest ranking rant … these represented only a tenth of the comments considering that it represented a “good, affordable price”.

 

As is often the case, I am left with a lot of questions arising out of these reports … but the survey does give us considerable room for thought.   In brief:

• Rants outnumber Raves
• Service is as important as the rooms
• Food is important and not just an additional service – especially a good breakfast to start the day
• Other services and facilities may be valuable … but they do not seem to be as important as the “basics”, the accommodation itself, the quality and level of service and the food.

What do you think?

 

Tags: Hotels, Tourism