Some travel agents may regard review sites such as TripAdvisor to be a competitive source of travel advice, but the majority of their clients apparently see agent counseling and Web review sites as complementary. In fact, consumers who book through travel agents are more likely than other travelers to visit review sites, according to Travel Weekly's survey, "Travel Booking Trends Among Leisure Travelers 2011-2010." (Read more from the Consumer Trends report here.)
The survey showed:
- Half of all leisure travelers said they seek out the opinions of other consumers on travel review sites, and a significantly, higher percentage of those who used a travel agent in the past 12 months also use travel review sites than those who did not use the services of a travel agent (60% vs. 47%).
- Of those who use travel review websites, nearly all said they have at least "some influence," and just over 1 in 5 said they have "very much influence" in travel choices. Younger travelers (age 21 to 35) appear to be most influenced by these sites.
- More than one-third of those who use travel review sites rated them "good" in terms of providing accurate and helpful advice.
- Travel review sites are also popular with more frequent travelers, higher spenders and higher-income clients, groups that also fit the profile of travel agents users.
Other research shows similar results as far as the widespread use and strong influence of review sites.
Trip Schneck, managing partner with District Hospitality Partners, a lodging investment and management company, said that most studies show consumers are using review sites to help make purchase decisions, with somewhere between 60% and 88% indicating that reviews do influence their travel plans.
Agents and review sites
"Our clients do gather information from such sites as TripAdvisor," said W. Reed Atkins, CEO of CI Travel in Norfolk, Va. But, he added, those clients "often read conflicting reviews that lead them back to our agents for what they consider to be a more reliable, first-hand opinion on a property or destination. In general, the Internet is a good place to start accumulating information, but it often requires someone with actual knowledge of a property or destination to sort out the appropriate choice for the client."
Adele Gutman is vice president of sales, marketing and revenue for the Library Hotel Collection, which has made TripAdvisor a centerpiece of its marketing efforts.
"Consumers will check out TripAdvisor, then book through an agent," Gutman said. "And we know that our travel agent partners use reviews before they book our hotels. In fact, an agent who hasn't been to a hotel personally would be wise to consult TripAdvisor. Reviews make agents feel more confident about their advice to clients."
At one hotel company, the review sites are even perceived to offer a level of quality, high-spending clients comparable with those who use travel agents.
Danette Opczewski, executive vice president for Denihan Hospitality Group, which operates Affinia Hotels, said, "Having a good relationship with travel agents is like having a good relationship with TripAdvisor; they both provide high-quality guests at higher prices."
Online reviews: Heavy on hotels
Those who indicated that travel-review websites had "some" or "very much" influence in their travel choices were asked which purchases the sites influenced. The dominant purchase for those influenced by review sites was nonresort hotels (65%) and resort hotels (61%), with all-inclusive resorts a distant third (37%).
Other travel purchases were far less influenced by review sites, with air at 22%, cruises and packaged tours at 19% and car rentals at 14%.
The reviews have been so important for hotels that for a while it seemed there might be a move toward hotel firms posting third-party reviews on their own sites, but that trend hasn't gained traction. Denihan, which was early in posting TripAdvisor reviews right on the home page of one of its hotels, has de-emphasized that approach.
"When TripAdvisor first became important, we wanted our guests to be able to share their experiences with one another," Opczewski said. "That's still important, although it's less prominent on our site. However, we do track our TripAdvisor rankings as one factor in determining the bonuses of our general managers.
"We consider TripAdvisor a great distribution channel because we can develop relationships with those who post reviews."
Parsing by age
The greatest demographic differentiator among users of travel review sites was age. For those ages 21 to 34, review sites had "some influence" for 67% and "very much influence" for 31%. For those ages 35 to 54, those numbers were 78% and 18% respectively, while for those over 55 the responses were 82% and 18%. Still, in all three categories, almost no users reported little or no influence.
Other research has produced similar findings. The annual Access America Vacation Confidence Index, released by Mondial Assistance USA, a travel insurance company, showed that whereas 60% of all customers of all ages are influenced by online reviews, 74% of those under age 35 say online reviews influence their plans.
Moreover, those who read reviews also tend to be bigger spenders.
"People who look at reviews will spend more to get a premium product," Gutman said. "It's a big investment to come to a city like New York, and you have to have the best experience you can. You will spend $50 more [a night] to get that. Each of our hotels has competitors nearby with much lower rates, and they're empty and we're full, in large part because of TripAdvisor.
"Even the occasional negative comment will help us," she added. "We recently had one guest cancel another reservation because he saw how we handled a complaint on TripAdvisor."
How useful are they?
According to Travel Weekly's survey, more than a third of consumers who use travel-review sites rated them "good" in terms of providing accurate and helpful advice. Those who also used a travel agent in the past year had a more positive view of these sites than those who did not use a travel agent in the past year, by a margin of 45% to 31%.
Research on the quality of online reviews varies widely, possibly because of the pools of those being surveyed. Several surveys commissioned by TripAdvisor found very positive attitudes about the trustworthiness of online reviews.
In a recent study by PhoCusWright, commissioned by TripAdvisor, 98% of respondents found TripAdvisor hotel reviews to be accurate as far as the actual experience, with 60% seeing the reviews as "highly or extremely accurate," and 92% agreed that TripAdvisor hotel reviews "help me pick the right hotel for my travel needs."
A full 83% of respondents usually or always consult TripAdvisor reviews before booking a hotel, PhoCusWright found.
(PhoCusWright surveyed a sample of 3,641 consumers who were solicited at random through a pop-up invitation link on TripAdvisor.com, so they were already TripAdvisor users.)
In another TripAdvisor-commissioned survey, conducted by Forrester, 81% of travelers said reviews were important when deciding which hotel to book; 75% said their vacation was better because they had used reviews to make sure they picked the best place for them.
According to Forrester, 50% of travelers consider reviews from online contributors who have submitted multiple reviews to be more credible. Nearly half of travelers won't book a hotel or resort unless they find online reviews of the property. When assessing reviews, 77% of travelers usually ignore extreme comments and make a general assessment of customer responses, according to Forrester. And the same research found that 71% of travelers think seeing a management response to reviews is important.
While TripAdvisor is dominant on the online review front, other sites are emerging and promising more valid reviews by verifying that reviewers actually stayed in the hotels. TripAdvisor's competitors perceive an opening in the market because of what they claim is a lack of trust by many travelers when it comes to online reviews. Expedia, for one, verifies that reviewers have stayed in, and paid for, the hotels they review.
District Hospitality's Schneck said he believes the online review space has become a "wild, wild West" with "lack of authentication, hotels writing negative reviews about their competitors and hiring public relations companies to write positive reviews about them, hotels incentivizing guests to write reviews, etc."
Schneck, who is also founder of a new review site called Hotel Me, in partnership with Gannett/USA Today, asserted, "Somewhere between 20% and 70% [of consumers] have trust issues with the reviews they are reading."
While that range is so broad as to be meaningless, the Vacation Confidence Index found that only 63% of consumers find online reviews to be trustworthy; the remainder are less trusting.
While verification of reviews is laudable, some believe sites other than TripAdvisor do not deliver enough users to carry weight. As Gutman noted, "TripAdvisor has more than 60 million users who believe the information they find there. Expedia reviews are fine, but that is a small and self-selecting microcosm of guests."
The future of online reviews
Social media are coming on strong as venues for sharing opinions with friends and other connections. Sarah Keeling, a spokesperson for Expedia, said, "The biggest thing that's happening next is around social. Review sites are really just getting started with this, but it's incredibly exciting to imagine how bringing social networks deeper into traveler reviews can really add value all the way around."
New review sites are also in the works. The aim of Hotel Me, Schneck said, "is to provide consumers real reviews from real people." Schneck said the site has "patent-pending business methods" of verifying reviews.
Hotel Me will also serve as the review engine for USA Today Travel, a travel portal.
"Online reviews are here to stay," Schneck said. "As long as consumers trust other consumers more than the marketers, there will be a place in the travel-planning process for user-generated travel reviews. We think the direction of online reviews centers around verification and personalization."
Opczewski observed, "There is no question that the use of review sites by guests is increasing, as are comments on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Different kinds of consumers like different kinds of sites. For instance, Yelp does more in the food and beverage space."
As a result of the burgeoning review field, Opczewski said, "We use Revinate, which is an online review aggregator, to get a broader view of what people are saying."
Clearly, the are many ways to measure consumer trust. Perhaps the most meaningful indicator is that Travel Weekly's survey found that fully 98% of respondents who had used review sites said they intended to use them again.
Read more from the Consumer Trends report here.