Guest Sentiment Information Strengthens Business Intelligence, Answers Performance Questions

Hotel review sites like TripAdvisor and Expedia are now major influences that affect property profitability. While comments on these popular travel sites directly impact a property’s bottom line, their written format makes them difficult to track and analyze. Likewise, chain and property guest satisfaction scores provide valuable information on how guests see hotels, but the why behind the scores may be hard to uncover. Until now, correlating written online property ratings and brand comment card scores with financial performance metrics has been a missing piece of the performance intelligence puzzle.

Recent advances in text analytics technology now make it possible to convert written online ratings, comment card detail, and other guest-satisfaction measures into quantifiable metrics. Linking these data points to property performance enables operators to see whether a booking decline was the result of guest sentiments connected to ongoing staff performance, a negative comment posted by a guest on a travel website, or the result of factors unrelated to guest input. When operators can match guest sentiment data with daily performance and their competitive set, the result is actionable information they can use to make quick corrections and optimize revenues.

Aptech adds guest sentiment tracking to Execuvue

Aptech is now leveraging text analytics to include guest sentiment tracking in its Execuvue® Business Intelligence System. Execuvue’s sentiment tracking system enables managers to evaluate and compare guest sentiment scores for multiple properties on one screen and draw parallels with occupancy, RevPAR, and other performance management indicators to give operators a 360-degree view of each of their properties’ performance. Execuvue’s sentiment data is refreshed weekly from social media websites that include Trip Advisor and Expedia. In addition, Aptech established relationships with hotel brands to gather guest score-card information and integrate it with Execuvue for reporting in multiple formats that enables understanding of the factors affecting performance.

Executive dashboards correlate performance with guest sentiment

Execuvue integrates guest sentiment data in its performance display dashboards along with metrics that include competitive information from STR reports, labor statistics, financial numbers, and other data that gives a total picture of all factors affecting performance.

The Execuvue Sentiment Engine measures the two primary sources of guest satisfaction information:

• Brand data, including email surveys and brand comment cards, and;
• Web data from social media sites and hotel review sites.

The system collects data from all sources, including written comments and, in conjunction with Clarabridge, uses a natural language processing program to extract written speech prompts and then converts them to measurable scores. Additionally, it provides drill down capabilities so operators can view individual guest comments that make up the sentiment metrics.

The sentiment analysis process

• Guests provide feedback via brand surveys or web posts on TripAdvisor, Expedia, etc.;
• Aptech collects the feedback via standardized data exports from brand surveys and web crawlers that extract data from web posts;
• Text is quantified using “Natural Language Processing” that converts clauses, tags, and parts of speech and assigns a numerical value to a guest’s editorial review for analysis.

Managers can view performance metrics side-by-side with satisfaction survey and guest opinion data and then drill down to identify specific reasons for changes in occupancy. A click on the metric takes operators directly to the postings that contributed to the overall score.

For example, it takes only a few seconds to see that a guest’s TripAdvisor comment about a leaky refrigerator corresponded with a drop in bookings for the usually busy Labor Day weekend.

Execuvue’s pioneering technology gives operators valuable information that was previously unavailable for business decisions.

By Cam Troutman, vice president of Aptech Computer Systems, Inc.

Aptech Computer Systems

Aptech Computer Systems, Inc., based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, leads the hospitality industry in leveraging change by valuing human relationships and applying technology to solve business problems for people. Incorporated in 1970, Aptech is a financial and operations technology solutions and service company whose products include state-of-the-art back office, business intelligence, and enterprise planning products: Profitvue(r), Execuvue(r), EV Lite, and Webvue(r)
. Over 2,500 properties, including very large chains, multiple-property management companies, and single-site hotels utilize Aptech solutions to understand their financial and operational data. Execuvue and Profitvue are registered trademarks of Aptech Computer Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are owned by their respective holders.

CONTACTS:
Aptech Computer Systems
Cam Troutman, Vice President
135 Delta Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15238
Phone: (800) 245-0720 or (412) 963-7440
Email: vueinfo@aptech-inc.com
http://www.aptech-inc.com


Media Contact:
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Softscribe Inc.
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Email: Julie@softscribeinc.com
http://www.Softscribeinc.com




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