Online Reviews Remodeled

I had an epiphany...surely someone else already thought of this so I look forward to your comments.

As online reviews gain traction as the preferred source of traveler insight, hotels around the world are struggling to control their marketing message. Online reviews, blog posts and tweets suddenly seem to have an influence on buying decisions that rivals the influence of a multi-million dollar marketing campaign.

In response, the Brands and individual properties are spending huge amounts of money on social media and social marketing. We are training our sales and marketing staffs to monitor online feedback on sites like Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp and the like. Yet, neither the brands or individual properties have taken the step to share the guest satisfaction data they already have...why?

Imagine this: a traveler goes to XYZBrand.com (or XYZOnlineTravelAgency.com) to shop for a hotel room. In addition to rates, amenities and location, now the traveler can also compare guest satisfaction scores. Why not? The brands have this data, and I would argue that it is statistically far more valid than the third party ratings. Most hotels get dozens, if not hundreds, of responses per month to their guest satisfaction surveys. Why not take four or five key questions, such as "overall satisfaction" and "everything in working order", and share the aggregate ratings with the consumers?

Brands (and most independent properties) have the data, which was legitimately collected from verified real guests, and it's relatively unbiased feedback that was solicited originally for the purpose of continuous improvement. If brands and properties shared this information (or at least some of it) with potential guests, they would earn respect from travelers for transparency. If they go the extra mile and share the same data with OTA's and online feedback websites, it could either replace or supplement those sites independent reviews.

This approach would create a renewed sense of trust with our guests, and perhaps equally important it would give them [relatively] accurate information to consider in the buying process. Go compare the number of online reviews for your hotel to the number of guest satisfaction surveys your hotel gets - I think you'll agree that your internal surveys results are far more statistically valid, if for no other reason because of the sample pool size.

What do properties and brands have to lose by sharing this data? If their scores are poor, their online reviews are probably poor too...

Is there a fear that "the truth hurts"?