TripAdvisor has announced that over 47,000 hospitality businesses, of which 30,000 are small to medium-sized hotels and bed & breakfasts, have used the site's free Review Express service since it launched in May 2013. Review Express users are seeing an average uplift of 33 percent in reviews for their property on TripAdvisor as a result of using the service, helping hospitality businesses enrich their presence on the site.
Since the service debuted last May, TripAdvisor has launched a number of enhancements to the service with the aim of delivering a better user experience for business owners using Review Express. In July 2013, TripAdvisor introduced the Review Express Dashboard, providing users of the service with a useful summary of the effectiveness of their email campaigns, automatically updated to report on their most recent activity.
And in an effort to further improve Review Express for users, TripAdvisor today announced the latest enhancements to the service, including:
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More streamlined ability to save and reuse email campaign templates, allowing users to more quickly send email campaigns using saved templates
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Ability to update photo and "from" email address on multiple templates at once using default settings
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Ability to automate the sending of Review Express campaigns for reservations made through internet booking engines connected to TripAdvisor
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Additional how-to guides, tip sheets and best practice information on how to get the most out of using Review Express
"There's no question that reviews play a pivotal role in the booking decision for travellers – according to recent PhoCusWright research, more than half of TripAdvisor users will not book a hotel that does not have reviews," said Severine Philardeau, VP Global Partnerships, TripAdvisor for Business. "Review Express was created to help hospitality businesses encourage and generate more reviews for their property page on TripAdvisor and the service is delivering great benefits to business owners. Review Express is helping them to generate a third more reviews by using the service and, on average, over a quarter of their total reviews on the site come as a result of a Review Express email.
Mansion Hotel & Spa at Werribee Park, Victoria, has been using Review Express since it launched last year and has seen encouraging results. Adrian Dent, Director of Operations at The Lancemore Group, said they are extremely pleased with the number of new reviews they've received as a result of using the service.
"We used to send out emails to guests after their stay to ask for reviews but we've started using Review Express to collect guest feedback since it launched in May 2013," Dent said. "Review Express is a simple and cost-free way to encourage recent guests to post reviews based on their experience and has delivered encouraging results. We noticed immediately that hit ratio is greater than any other mechanisms we had put in place to gather feedback from our guests."
Hospitality business owners must be registered on TripAdvisor to use the free service. They can access Review Express via their Management Centre.
