Customer feedback is £3.2b opportunity for hospitality industry, says report
Barclays released a new report based on pioneering research into the potentially revolutionary effect that online customer feedback and reviews are having on the hospitality and leisure sector in the UK.
The report suggests that businesses that do not adequately respond to this trend are in danger of missing a vital opportunity to both grow their business and stay ahead of the competition.
Online feedback sites have rapidly become an important tool for consumers to make a wide range of leisure and hospitality decisions – from the best place to spend a family holiday to where to get lunch.
Customers can now access independent, real-time reviews on a far wider range of hotels, restaurants and other leisure destinations than ever before. These usergenerated reviews are constantly being added – 200 new reviews are added every minute on TripAdvisor– keeping information up to date and helping businesses make timely and informed decisions on issues such as pricing, operations and strategy.
Despite the prevalence of online reviews, this is a comparatively under-researched area, particularly in the UK. The Barclays report shows an extensive survey of over 2,000 customers and 541 businesses to assess how the growth of online customer review sites will affect the UK’s leisure and hospitality businesses in the future. The report also shows constructed economic models to measure the potential future impact of responses by businesses to changing consumer behaviour on the sector and the wider economy.
