2020 Reputation Year in Review

Every year, Revinate publishes a Hotel Reputation Benchmark Report to provide the industry with actionable and comparative insights from hotels around the world. We analyzed over 147,000 hotels in 200+ countries from Revinate Guest Feedback customers so we can provide a unique review on a unique year.

Below is a snapshot of the Section 1, Year in Review.

You can download the full 2020 Reputation Report for free here.

With borders closed, international and business travel evaporated almost overnight. Demand came to a halt and, for the first time ever, hotels were forced to close their doors and furlough staff. By all measures, 2020 was a very difficult year for hotels across the world. But, amidst the hardship, there were some bright spots that allowed hoteliers to stay positive.

How Covid-19 Affected Travel Plans

It’s no surprise that travelers were greatly affected by Covid-19. 68% of global travelers had current or future travel plans affected by Covid-19 last March. With such a dramatic impact, it’s no surprise that review volume decreased during the year.

40.4% of global travelers reported cancelling a trip, and another 27.2% reported postponing travel. Only 32.4% of global travelers were unaffected, meaning they didn’t have future travel plans or they didn’t make any changes to their trips.

Travel Outlook

No one expected a pandemic with government-issued stay-at-home orders and many countries on lockdown. Travelers are now extremely eager to resume plans and travel, as pent-up demand continues to build. So much so, the term revenge travel was coined.

Many consumers have been saving money all year and are looking forward to “going big” when they feel safe to travel. This is good news for hotels, as 72.7% of global respondents indicated plans to travel in some capacity within 12 months.

How the stay will change

During the pandemic, guests’ values changed. They had more to think about when considering travel, including safety, cleanliness, and the status of the pandemic – in addition to government mandated restrictions. For the first time ever,  location, price, and everything your hotel has to offer were secondary considerations.

Savvy hotels realized they needed to change guest-facing messaging to address these new considerations, while also screening online reviews to address ever-changing concerns. Many hotels openly shared their cleaning protocols, shared updates, and expressed their best wishes during hard times.

From our Marketing Reputation Benchmark, we saw a clear increase in announcements in March and April as hotels pivoted their communications. This allowed hotels to not only stay top of mind with guests, but also show that they were quickly adapting to meet the needs of their guests.

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Download the full Marketing Reputation Report today to get the actionable insights you need to improve your hotel’s online reputation and benchmark your success. We cover 5 topics including year in review, review volume, site distribution, review ratings, and response rate.