Hi!
I've noted that some hostels are using the Reviews Widget by hostelworld on their websites.
The question: Is it a good idea to use this widget in the hostel website?
It looks like that:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1862[/ATTACH]
Of cause if the hostel doesn't have a very good rating, it's not a good idea to show some doubtful reviews on the web once again, but let's think of the hostel with nice rating because there's many hostels who can be proud of having a good reviews. So is it helpful to use this widget for them?
pros:
- Customer trusts more to the official reviews of HW, and seeing good ones on the website of the hostel will really increase their loyalty and it can rise number of bookings.
- It makes website interactive, the latest comments in the widget shows that the hostel is full of life. On many websites you can find the reviews selected and copied from HW that were made while creating the site some years ago and since then it was not updated, or there's online form where everyone could write a comment about the hostel but the last one was made loooong time ago (and actually was written by the hostel owner). Then the customer will not feel that the hostel live and full of guests.
cons:
- potentially it can decrease number of direct bookings. Customer wanna see the end of the comment, will click "view more", will go away from your site and will probably book on HW ( what is the сhance that the booking on HW will happen????).
- the risk to loose the customer at all if they find the latest comments are not good. No one is protected from some really bad reviews, no matter how good is the hostel, sometimes it just depends on personality of the guest.
Everyone would prefer direct bookings instead of HW bookings but we prefer to get, say, 10 HW bookings instead of 2 direct bookings.
So here is the question, to be or not to be?
What do you think?
Log in to join discussion