Does TripAdvisor Still Matter for Hotels in 2024? (Reputation Management Masterclass) - Christian de Boer, Jaya House Hotels

Josiah: Yesterday, we met Christian de Boer, Managing Director of Jaya House Hotels, who has achieved the incredible recognition of being one of TripAdvisor's top 25 hotels in the world for five consecutive years. But does TripAdvisor still matter like it used to? I mean, in hospitality, we've been tracking feedback on TripAdvisor for a long time, and there are so many other platforms and review sites that have come up since then. Well, stay tuned to hear Christian's unfiltered thoughts on all of this and the implication and takeaways for you and your hotel. This is Hospitality Daily, the show that helps you stay informed and inspired each day by the most interesting people in hospitality. My name is Josiah McKenzie, and my goal is to help you reconnect with why you work in this industry and get fired up to go out there, delight others, and reach your goals. Let's get started. What is the most meaningful award or recognition that you've received?

Christian: It's TripAdvisor because that's guests. That's actual people. Now, a lot of people, every time that we're in it, every time within a few days, I'll hear that I buy the reviews. I've even heard that I own TripAdvisor, all of those things. I think, wow, imagine if I would own. That will be cool. Or if I could buy them, if that is the reason, why does no one else, not even the other hotels, do it? If it's apparently that simple to buy your reviews, then why does the Four Seasons not do it? And any of those things now reality is you can't, you can't buy three and a half thousand five star reviews and zero zeros. mainly because if we would today have a guest checking in who books us because of our reviews, and if we then turn out to be actually it's all fake, it's all a lie, that person will be the first one to write down straight away, and what TripAdvisor does, is it keeps you on your feet. It keeps us active, and it means we have to impress every single guest, every single day, every single time. And look, it takes a bit of time to get used to that way of thinking, but once it's done, it's done. And once that system is running and once that machine is running, then it's all fine. Then it's relatively easy.

Josiah: It's a good point you mentioned because I spent years of my career working at a business that was all around managing online reputation. And so I saw this question come up again and again. And it's a good point, right? Because even if you theoretically could buy online reviews, which for many reasons isn't the case, but like you would get some negative reviews. That is absolutely insane. You have no negative reviews because, in any business, things go wrong. How do you have zero negative reviews? That's incredible.

Christian: No, it's not. By being here, by being on the ground in too many hotels, whoever's in charge, that person sits in an office. He arrives at 8.30 in the morning. He leaves at 5.30. He has meetings and meetings and PNL reports, this report, head office meetings, and whatever other kind of meetings with people. He's actually not on the ground. He has no clue what he's doing. He's not involved in any of the things dealing with guests because he's completely absorbed in the paperwork. Nonsense. I barely do any paperwork. I have some staff doing the paperwork for me. That means I can walk around, I can talk to my guests, I can deal with their issues, deal with their worries, find out what their stresses are. And when things go wrong here, I don't know, an air conditioning that doesn't work and it's 100 Fahrenheit outside. That's a problem. Let's be open about it. Let's be simple. I'm so sorry, we've made a mistake. Let's deal with it. Instead of hiding or, oh, I don't know, my boss, I need to wait for the management or this or that. No, my top 10 staff members are all completely allowed to do whatever they want. If they want to give away a guest a complimentary night, please do. So it's dealt with straight away and not, oh, you need to write us a letter, you need to do is this, you need to whatever a guest has to jump through hoops whilst the hotel has made a mistake. That's wrong. The hotel should immediately go up to the guest Hold on, we've made a mistake. This is not good enough. This is not what we normally do. Here is either compensation or this or give them a complimentary night. Deal with it straight away and head on. And that takes away any stresses. Every guest, I would like to think anywhere in the world, they're perfectly fine when things go wrong. They are getting frustrated when no one deals with it. or when they're being told, sorry, you need to go to that line, or you need to do that or not. The hotel does something wrong. This is what we will do. No, it's you need to do this, you need to do that. And no, it's it's too much of an issue. The same as with the airlines. Now you have to stand in a line. It's 2024. Why does the airline not immediately, okay, we've rebooked you on this. Here is whatever how much it is to book a hotel for one night, two nights, three nights, bang, done. Instead of, oh, you need to write in to us and deal with customer services department. It's 24 now. This should be enormously fast. And this should be upfront.

Josiah: It's how you create loyalty. It really is. So one thing I'm genuinely curious about, Christian, is whether, today in 2024, TripAdvisor is just as important as it has always been. Word of mouth is clearly so important to you. How do you view the importance of TripAdvisor today and its impact on your business and the industry?

Christian: TripAdvisor is still critical, still absolutely critical, but there's now also Google, and Google is also critical. Google has, I think, invested a lot of time, effort, and technology into making itself critical. So now you've got two. They both need to be the same, otherwise it's not gonna be good. And on top of that, you have word of mouth. And then I'm sure, now you have some smaller ones, the booking.com reviews and all kinds of other review sites that people have, including one that's really normal in the United States, But in all honesty, I never heard of it before. Apparently, we're doing good on Yelp. Now that's luck. I never heard of that, but we're on it as well now. So all of that will follow. It's first a business that needs to be good, and then the rest will follow. A TripAdvisor should be a reaction to the actual service people have had. Google and Yelp are identical. So all of that will follow from an actual business model where we're trying to impress a guest and not piss them off.

Josiah: It's a great point because if there were only one review site out there where people could share, you know, maybe you could spend all your time trying to optimize that. What I'm hearing from you is TripAdvisor is still critically important, but there's others that are also very important. And so rather than just trying to optimize your presence, on each. Well, you are, I guess, but you're doing that by running a good hotel business, right, on delighting your guests. And then wherever they decide to talk about that experience, you know, that's going to happen. But you're not trying to just, you know, be out there, spend all day trying to optimize a digital profile. I am curious, though, about what metrics are most important to you for you to lead the business. Because it sounds like word of mouth is a key one, you know, kind of like, how do you assess, are we doing what our mission here is to do?

Christian: Look, I don't think it's the hotel. Personally, I think it's about showcasing that one can run a hotel, one can be a hotel, and apparently, it's a good hotel. whilst sticking to what you believe in. In my case, that is being plastic-free, being single-use plastic-free means employing full-time staff, it means having the best healthcare of any company in the country. So those are my pillars, and we stick to that, and then the rest will follow. And the hotel makes all of that happen. The hotel gives us the opportunity to make all of that happen. And that then really filters through and comes back, because that also means happy stuff. Happy stuff: They're the ones working and making sure my guests are happy, which creates word of mouth. All of those pieces of the puzzle are really critical And so do I focus on TripAdvisor Google? Not really. I respond, yes, but it's not 90% of my day. All of the other things are just something I like doing more, to be honest. And I'd like us to be creative. I'd like us to be different. There's a hotel in town here that imports a Christmas tree every year from Canada. Now, to DHL, a tree over from Canada to here is 8,000 US dollars. They have three. That's $24,000 for two weeks in a Buddhist country. We don't have Christmas in Komodo. We don't know what Christmas is. So there's no way I would DHL a Christmas tree to here, but we still need to do something for our guests. So what we did instead, and I'll tell you the price in a second, we ordered the little gravel, and 24,000 of them. The ceiling in the restaurant is six meters high, so we hung 24,000. We painted each of them individually black because they're gray originally. So we hung 24,000 hand-painted, individually hung black stones from the ceiling. into the shape of a Christmas tree. Now, that is what impresses a guest, that wows a guest. And it means that because it's handmade, it took us three months with three staff, nine hours a day, six days a week to make it happen. And that is still here. I think that's more of a Christmas spirit than importing a tree by DHL. Also, because that tree, which is our tree for our guests, was internally a training tool. Internally, it was nothing to do with Christmas. Internally, it shows that if every one of those 24,000 stones hangs at the right level to the best of its ability, something pretty comes out. On the same note, all of those stones are connected to the one next to it. showcasing teamwork. So even if one stone makes a mistake, it's fine because the stones next to it are still there. So, showing teamwork. Now that thing cuts on both sides. So yes, it's a Christmas tree for the guests. It's a team-building tool and an explanation tool for my staff. Total cost, excluding staff, because they said three months, three staff, nine hours a day, six days a week is a whole $825. So instead of 24,000, $825 whilst I'm convinced there are more images on the internet of our Christmas tree than that particular hotel. I love that creativity. Yeah. Yeah. We need to, we need to be different. I mean, not too far from where I'm sitting right now is a duck sofa, which made out of, I think it's 375 plush ducks, which we made here with the, with the team. It's, it's about being different. It's about being creative. It's about creating wow moments. And that doesn't always mean spending money. It means think differently. It's about be different. That's it. That's who we are.