Case Study: How the MGM Grand Sanya Hotel achieved a 4.7/5 rating on Ctrip

Our Account Manager for APAC, Stefanie Lim recently caught up with Joe Zheng, Hotel Manager at the MGM Grand Sanya in China to discuss how the hotel is currently managing and improving its online reputation. The hotel has climbed the ranks on TripAdvisor becoming number 3 of 1,227 Hotels in Sanya as well as achieving a 4.7/5 rating based on 10750 reviews on Ctrip.

Why do you think managing your online reputation is important?

Nowadays, with mobile and social networking, people are very well connected and always up to date. Customers are seeking information about hotels before booking by searching the internet for online reviews on OTAs. Therefore, managing your property’s online reputation is vital to the success of the hotel business. We’ve seen that if your online reputation is managed efficiently, effectively and professionally, it will have a direct impact on revenue and guest satisfaction.

What are the steps you take when responding to online reviews? How do you respond?

It is always important to analyze the feedback from online reviews as they contain the necessary insight for opportunities to improve. When responding, we are objective and always respond with honesty. Hoteliers should respond to them with sincerity and show appreciation that the person has taken the time to write a review. It is important to not appear to guests (and potential guests) like you are making excuses when responding to reviews, rather, you want them to know that their opinion is valued.

In general, by proactively managing our online reputation and gathering guest feedback from surveys, we have been able to tackle some key issues at our hotel. ReviewPro’s analytics have given us the necessary insight to make these improvements to enhance the guest experience. Internally, we are conducting some deeper research by comparing the online reputation scores with our business KPIs, such as occupancy and rates and analyzing the connections to identify how both work together. We are extremely pleased that we have been able to improve some shortcomings on property that have affected our guests stay at our hotel.

As Hotel Manager, ReviewPro’s solution helps me interact more closely with past, present or future guests. It helps me to analyze our level of service and identify areas where action is required. Ultimately, ReviewPro is the perfect tool for us to ensure we improve our hotel in an efficient and effective way.

What is your internal action plan for improving guest satisfaction?

All EXCOMs members and divisional heads have full access to the ReviewPro tool.Every manager creates reports to share internally on a weekly and monthly basis that are shared with all employees. The training department also cross checks the departmental training plans with information extracted from the ReviewPro tool. One of our most important objectives is to ensure goals for GRI™ and guest surveys are well set and achieved by the team.

Do you find the TripAdvisor Review Collection Program useful?

Yes, in addition to helping us increase review volume on TripAdvisor, the program allows us to solicit the specific, structured, verified feedback necessary to measure if service and operational standards are being met during each guest’s stay. TripAdvisor is very commonly used for international travelers so we use these reviews to ensure that we are also catering well for the needs of different cultures.