Stronger Consumer Feedback:WebsitesMakeCustomersKing
Not only are star rating schemes causing problems, but they are rapidly becoming out of date too. Increasingly, websites such as Tripadvisor or Expedia offer immediate and accessible feedback from previous customers to anyone considering whether to stay at a wide range of hotels, eat at a restaurant or visit a nearby attraction. This means they achieve the key aim behind any existing rating scheme: they provide better information to help visitors decide what they’re buying, in a convenient and easy to understand format, before it’s too late for them to change their minds. Unsurprisingly they’re growing fast, with some claiming growth of 50% or more per year.
The industry expects these websites progressively to take over many of the traditional functions of an old-fashioned rating system, and cure some of their flaws too. For a start they will be universal, because every firm will be rated by its customers whether it joins the scheme or not. And the feedback and ratings will, by definition, reflect a complete and up-to-date spectrum of what customers really want, rather than what the providers or rating agencies think they’d prefer. This means they won’t be elitist, and will accurately reflect if a particular hotel or restaurant offers good value for money, whether it is cheap and cheerful or expensive and luxurious. Finally, many of these sites allow sophisticated searches for customers who want accommodation with particular or specialist features, such as hotels with a low carbon footprint, good accessibility for disabled visitors or gluten-free food.
Interestingly, the tourism industry firms which are being rated on these websites are cautiously positive about their growing influence. The customer ratings can be extremely blunt – sometimes brutal – but well-run firms say they’re increasingly using them as a valuable source of customer feedback on whether they’re doing a good job, and what they need to work on to do better. This process is incredibly powerful, and will either drive up standards or drive out poor providers faster than anything any Government-sponsored scheme can do.
The new websites aren’t perfect, of course. They have to guard against malicious or inaccurate postings from customers with a grudge, or from unscrupulous firms which may attempt to divert customers from nearby competing hotels or restaurants. But consumers will naturally gravitate to the sites which are most reliable, and stop using the ones which aren’t, so there’s a strong incentive to ensure the content is clean and accurate. Equally, few of them can boil all the customer feedback down into a single, simple summary rating (the equivalent of a star system) just yet, although many of the firms behind these websites say it is technically feasible and should be available soon. And finally, of course, websites are no use to tourists who aren’t comfortable with technology. This is a shrinking minority of potential customers, but still represents a substantial proportion of the market.
The Government will encourage any rating schemes or customer websites which improve the quality of information which visitors can use to choose the right holiday for them, so they make informed choices rather than discovering problems when it’s too