Revinate released its 2019 "Global Hotel Reputation Benchmark Report." Now in its fourth year, the barometer analyzed 427 million online guest reviews from 140,000 properties across 200 countries over the past two years. For the first time, there are signs that guests’ interest in writing online reviews is waning.
Although still growing year over year, overall global review volume growth decelerated in 2018. The number of reviews grew only 8 percent, compared to 27 percent in 2017. Despite this slowdown, global review sites and online travel agencies continue to play a critical role in travelers’ booking decisions and can’t be ignored by hoteliers, according to the report.
The report also shows a shakeup and consolidation among the top review aggregators. In 2018, 84 percent of all global reviews came from just the top 3 sites, with a new leader, Google, emerging. Google grew its review volume 75 percent to 36.5 percent of the total in 2018, but couldn’t keep pace with 2017’s growth of 207 percent. Booking.com contributed 33.9 percent of reviews and TripAdvisor contributed 13.6 percent to round out the top three. In 2017, the top four online review sites by review volume (Booking.com, Google, TripAdvisor and Facebook) contributed 74 percent of the review volume Revinate analyzes.
“This report is a great resource for hoteliers looking to benchmark their own guest-feedback-management practices,” Revinate CEO and co-founder Marc Heyneker said in a statement. “It gives hoteliers the information they need to optimize their performance on key channels to maintain a strong online presence.”