Well its official, the war of hospitality reviews is on… End of last month we were reading about the 700 hotels that consider legal action against trip advisor over rogue reviews and even more recently we hear about the new database known as Guestscan whereby hotels can share their blacklist of really bad customers.
I can’t help but wonder if this is a good move by the industry especially when you consider that the vast majority of comments received are really positive ones (see this paper if interested in some statistics). We should give credit to the consumer of today as they are savvy enough to know when a review is not a genuine one. We should also give credit to the hotelier or restauranteur that takes the right approach and resolves issues that may have warranted a bad review in the past, or engages even with reviewers who lie and exposes them for what they truly are.
I wonder how long before the database of Guestscan is breached by some wise kid that then makes available the list to anyone that cares, and I wonder how often hoteliers will consider the wrong Mr “Smith” as a terrible guest. I have worked with companies that had 5 profile entries for the same return customer. As a guest with a rather unique name you would think my profile would be easily detectable but I have returned to a favourite hotel of mine 4 times within 2 years and each time I had to have a new profile created. Do the maths and see how easy it is to get mistakes in such a database. Not to mention the problems with the data protection act.
I really feel that such developments are against the spirit of hospitality and dare I say potentially bad for business… just imagine how your future customers would react if they knew there is a possibility that you are giving their personal details to a third party without their consent…
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