Excerpt from PhocusWire
Google is taking share from Booking.com when it comes to who generates the most hotel reviews, according to a study.
The Shiji Reviewpro Guest Experience Benchmark for the second quarter of 2023 revealed that Booking.com generated more than 39% of hotel reviews over the period but lost ground year-over-year while Google, with 32%, increased its share. Tripadvisor occupied the third-highest market share, at 10%, while Expedia represented only 5% of total reviews, a loss of 5.1 points since Q2 2021.
The study, which analyzes more than 3 million reviews and 9 million review comments for 9,500 hotels globally in 53 review sources and online travel agencies, also revealed that review volume increased by approximately 20% in the quarter.
The Asia Pacific region showed the highest growth rate in review volume at almost 71%, but overall volumes remain down about 8% on pre-pandemic levels.
Google also came out on top with the highest Source Index, which is an analysis of reviews from a particular source based on positive/negative sentiment and other attributes.
While Google’s score was 86%, Booking achieved the lowest Source Index at 83%. While Trip.com and Ctrip achieved higher Source Indexes, their share of reviews was relatively low at about 3% and 2%, respectively.
Despite their tiny share, the Chinese online travel brands saw huge volume increases with Ctrip increasing its volume almost fivefold and Trip.com increasing volume by more than 250%.
A semantic analysis of review comments revealed that 76% were positive and 24% negative with Ctrip reviews seeing the highest ratio of positive comments compared with Booking, which had the highest ratio of negative comments.
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