Hoteliers shed their reservations about commercial value of Internet initiatives

Like entrepreneurs in other sectors, hoteliers must embrace evolving technology or risk losing business to competition.

Staying technologically current in the hotel trade means:

•using smartphone apps to increase business efficiency;

•being open to having QR codes on advertising so potential customers can scan them on mobile devices to learn more about accommodations; and

•appreciating the power of customer reviews, the proliferation of customer-feedback websites and social media.

Customer evaluations no longer exclusively come written on comment cards or in secret shopper reports. Criticism is now immediate and available globally online.

“Before you’ve had your first cup of coffee in the morning, hundreds of potential travellers may have already read about your latest service blunder,” said Glenn Eleiter, general manager at the boutique hotel L’Hermitage. “Or they might have read that you have hard-working front desk staff.”

Eleiter has used the world’s largest traveller-review website Trip Advisor Inc. (Nasdaq:TRIP) to make a success of a hard-to-find 60-room boutique hotel wedged on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of a mixed-use building at the corner of Richards and Robson streets.

L’Hermitage’s occupancy rate last year was consistently 15 percentage points higher than the 66.6% occupancy rate that Smith Travel Research Inc. estimated as the average occupancy for hotels in Vancouver’s downtown peninsula in 2011.

Eleiter is convinced that he owes much of that success to TripAdvisor ranking four-year-old L’Hermitage No. 1 on its list of Vancouver hotels throughout 2011. L’Hermitage is now No. 2 on that list, after the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, but L’Hermitage recently won an award for being TripAdvisor’s top hotel in Canada in 2011.

Massachusetts-based TripAdvisor attracts 50 million unique visitors to its website each month, has a US$4.55 billion market capitalization and is influential because tourists put more credence in traveller testimonials than corporate advertising.

Web surfers can link their TripAdvisor and Facebook accounts so that their Facebook friends’ feedback on hotels appears at the top of the list of reviews that they see about hotels in any specified city. Studies show that people find friends’ reviews more persuasive than those from strangers.

This influence led Eleiter to buy a business account at TripAdvisor for several hundred dollars annually. TripAdvisor’s fees vary depending on how many rooms are in the hotel.

Obtaining a paid account, however, means that guests can book rooms easier. They click a link and are directed from TripAdvisor to either third-party booking websites, such as TripAdvisor’s former parent Expedia.com or directly to the hotel.

To encourage as many reviews as possible, Eleiter emails guests after their stay, thanking them for the visit and urging them to review the hotel by clicking a link that sends them to TripAdvisor’s website.

“We wanted to make it as easy as possible for guests to write as many reviews as possible for us,” Eleiter said. “But this wasn’t until we were completely confident of our service.”

Myron Effa, who owns the Pemberton Gateway Village, urges guests to write reviews, not only on TripAdvisor but also on upstart traveller-review sites such as Yelp Inc. (Nasdaq:YELP).

Another of Effa’s marketing tactics was to print stickers with chic snowmobile graphics and a QR code that links to his 20-suite hotel. He personally handed those out to people after asking if they wanted to put one on their vehicles.

Like Norm Dove, who co-owns Echo Valley Ranch and Spain the B.C. Interior, Effa posts photos and videos on his website that visitors can link to via Facebook.

Dove said effectively using technology also means using apps to save time.

For example, his iPhone is outfitted with FlightTrack, an app that alerts him if his guests’ flights are delayed. Dove’s ranch has a private air strip, but he often drives to Kamloops to pick up guests at the city’s airport.

Dove’s ranch ranked No. 3 in Canada on TripAdvisor’s 2011 list, and he credits the site with helping his business gain visitors after a dry patch last year.

“One thing I don’t like about TripAdvisor is that it drives people to booking agents. If you’re not a member of that booking agent, for instance Expedia.com, then that site will show that you have no availability.”