Why Lindner Hotels publishes all positive and negative reviews on their website and in their CRM tool.

The following interview is with Gunnar von Hagen, Corporate Director Operations and Central Project Management for Lindner Hotels.

Lindner Hotels is a family-run hotel company with 2,000 employees that operates 34 hotels in seven European countries. The special hotel concept by Otto Lindner, who is in charge of the company in second generation, received plenty awards and Otto Lindner himself became "Hotelier of the year".

Q. Mr. von Hagen, where do you think the future of the hotel industry is headed?

A. I believe that the implementation of innovative technologies along with a diverse portfolio of property offerings is where the industry needs to focus. They are a myriad of "like" hotels across the globe and this makes it difficult for prospective guests to make a booking decision. We, as hoteliers, need to offer the right hotel property to the right guest and deliver exceptional service. Some of the trends we see are personalization, recommendation and making sense of all data we collect every day.

Q. Can you elaborate a bit more on these trends?

A. Once concrete example, Lindner uses a sophisticated Guest Satisfaction Solution that enables us to collect feedback with a very high return rate. Then we analyze the feedback to improve operations in various departments and use the trends we identify for investment decisions. We also think we are one of the first hotel companies that closes the loop between the guests' past experience and their next check-in. We use the post stay guest reviews that TrustYou as an independent provider collects and establish a direct connection between TrustYou reviews and our CRM provider. This will enable us to push those survey results directly back into our CRM and then assign the comments directly to the guest portfolio. Our staff be it at the reception during check-in or our call centre agents will then be able to see the guest comments making sure we are delivering exactly what the guest wants and improve their next stay experience based on previous feedback. We can also use this data to create targeted marketing campaigns.

Q: That sounds interesting. So you are saying when Mr. Smith checks in and has previously reviewed any property of yours your at the hotel level are able to personally address his feedback?

A: Exactly. Think about this. For the first time we would be able to personally thank Mr. Smith for his feedback, we can tell him that we take is feedback seriously and that we love his positive feedback and want to improve on his suggestions – starting right now. We are excited that TrustYou, a leading innovator when it comes to guest feedback, supports us on this new path.

Q. Talking about guest feedback, we noticed that you are very transparent on your website giving guests an array of online review data, both good and bad, associated with the booking process. What is the logic behind this approach?

A. It is quite simple actually. In today's hotel and travel marketplace, there is a plethora of review content. A traveler can go to 10 or 20 sites to try and make a booking decision. We took the stance that in order to maintain contact with our guest online, we need to deliver the best possible data they need in order to book directly with us rather than using another channel. It is incredibly important to be open and honest with the traveler today. Ultimately, we want to be transparent with our guests and keep them on our site so we can convert them directly. Working with TrustYou on this makes sense for us. They have been establishing themselves, as a true independent trustworthy B2B review player. We have no control of which reviews are being published and we don't want to. And we see that our guests appreciate that openness very much.

Q. Can you support this with any numbers?

A: We don't publish any numbers but we see clear trends that users interact with the review data and that clearly helps with supporting them on their booking decision.

Q: What do you think about TrustYou's Meta-Reviews that they have been successfully launching with intermediaries like Kayak? Do you think hotels will eventually show these Meta-Reviews and TrustScores as well on their website?

A: Absolutely. There is a trend towards showing the most relevant content in the least amount of time and space – especially on mobile. The idea of showing a review summary that contains all feedback of all verified reviews across the web is brilliant and I think the industry will widely adopt it – be it on the supply or on the intermediary side.

Mr. von Hagen – thank you very much for your time.