Finding holiday destinations was once easy. You’d simply go to the travel agents or even look at something like teletext, find the best deal, and book without doing any further research.
Since the mid-1990s, the rise of the internet has led to many changes in the travel and tourism industry. Most people would immediately point to the widespread availability of cheaper online travel deals, but additional features include the opportunity to travel to more diverse places than were once available, and most notably, the ability to evaluate a destination in full prior to traveling.
Listening to Word of Mouth
There have been various marketing studies conducted recently that show people are more inclined to make decisions based on word of mouth – a review or recommendation from someone – rather than the persuasiveness of a particular ad campaign. During these studies, as many as eight out of ten people questioned have said they’ll ignore marketing altogether and instead go straight to what people who have tried the product or service are saying.
How it Works With Travel
Customer reviews are a common feature of all e-commerce businesses, and the same is true of travel websites, too.
Whether it is the websites of tour operators who are looking to promote their own business using customer reviews, or independent travel websites such as Trip Advisor or Lonely Planet, all of them place a premium on how people found a particular resort, place to stay, or attraction.
The only difference is that people perhaps look for reviews that are more detailed from a travel website, given that the cost of traveling is more than a t-shirt or a pair of jeans, for example, and you’d be more alert to negative advice.
Driving the Numbers
How a positive or a negative review influences future tourism is simple. If a particular town, or place of interest, attracts several positive reviews, then naturally people are going to take these recommendations on board and flock there in droves.
The opposite, of course, is true for places that attract many negative reviews; why visit somewhere that 100 people before have said they never would again?
Reviews from the independent sites, in particular, are a point of pride for many resorts and tour operators. It is common to find websites that boast “Rated in the Trip Advisor Top 10,” for example, or similar messages relating to other review pages.
The Purpose of Travel
Of course, customer reviews are not an exact science. While they are a useful guide, reading them doesn’t tell us about the expectations of that particular person before they traveled to their resort. Perhaps they were oversold something by their tour operator, or weren’t aware that a destination had a reputation as a party resort.
It is important, therefore, when using customer reviews, to qualify them against your own expectations and purpose for travel. Look beyond the star rating and build a picture of the reasons why people were happy and unhappy, and remember that people are more likely to post reviews when they’re angry.
Do Travel Reviews Work?
Travel reviews definitely work and are beneficial to travelers across the world. If nothing else, they help travelers to build an itinerary or make some tentative plans about what they might like to do, and they’ll help people avoid particularly bad locations from time to time, too.
However, the best aspect of them is definitely the sharing of hidden travel gems, the beach that no one knows is there, or the alleyway restaurant that is beautiful and very cheap. Travel reviews are great for boosting tourism numbers across the world, and help travelers to enjoy a better all-round experience.
Gabe Saunders is a tourism marketing professional whose main role is to encourage growth of word of mouth recommendations and reviews to help emerging travel trends, such as the hire of relocation campervans, become popular trends within the industry as a whole.
