Hospitality Today July-Aug 2016 | Page 13

than to third party websites as helping to drive customers to their businesses.
Andrew Mabbutt( left), CEO of ratings and reviews platform Feefo, believes Barclays’ findings serve to help businesses in the hospitality sector. He said:“ This report makes very interesting reading. Not only does it tell us that customers are engaging with reviews more, but also that businesses should be listening to their customers and act on these insights. Moreover, with 63 % of businesses not managing
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feedback strategically, there’ s a missed opportunity to gather business insights to make operational decisions and implement innovation. Such improvements can help to increase trust, traffic and sales, especially with a trusted feedback platform like Feefo.”
73 % of businesses surveyed say that they planned to make changes to how they deal with feedback – including investing in training, employing dedicated staff, and outsourcing feedback management – within the next five years.
Mabbutt remarked“ Whilst this is great news for feedback providers, it’ s important for hospitality businesses to gather only genuine reviews, feedback and business insights. Feefo is an invite-only platform, meaning that all of the reviews we gather are completely genuine and can be matched to every transaction. This prevents fake reviews being published which can have a seriously negative impact on business.”