Innisfree is a hotel company, but we are in the hospitality business. What’s the difference, you ask? A hotel company sells rooms. A hospitality business transforms this simple financial transaction into an experience. Innisfree’s reputation management program is a robust tool our operations, marketing and development teams use to improve guest experiences and live up to our corporate tagline of ‘creating fun and memorable experiences’ every day.

Guest satisfaction has been at the forefront of successful hotel operations since the first hotel opened its doors. However, in the last decade, the popularity of review sites, social media and online travel agencies such as Hotels.com and Expedia has skyrocketed. These websites have made large numbers of guest opinions publicly visible. It is not surprising that research has proven the link between guest reviews and revenue.

According to a 2012 Cornell University study, a one-point increase in a property’s average positive online review scores can lead to a possible:

• 0.89% increase in price (ADR).
• 0.54% increase in occupancy.
• 1.42% increase in RevPAR.

Online content created by our guests about our properties is called User Generated Content (UGC). Today, UGC makes up the large majority of the information available to consumers about our hotels. The volume of UGC on the Internet increases every day.

In 2014, our prospective guests looked at an average of 27 review and social media websites before choosing a hotel. According to TripAdvisor, 93 percent of travelers consult online reviews before booking a hotel.

At Innisfree, property managers use reviews to create training scenarios and to exemplify and reward team members for customer service excellence. Corporate managers use guest sentiments to quickly identify departments in need of improvement and to prioritize capital improvement investments. Our development team uses it to design hotels we know our guests will love.

The goals of Innisfree reputation management program are to:

• Use online sentiment data to improve guest experiences

• Encouraging guests to leave more online reviews

• Having managers respond to reviews in a timely and appropriate manner; and

• Extracting actionable data from guest feedback and to improve operations and physical attributes of our properties.

The volume of reviews we need to read, analyze and respond to is overwhelming. Hotel managers work hard to juggle multiple departments and guest concerns every moment of every day. From reservations to check-ins, housekeeping, revenue management and the well-being of guests, they are under a lot of pressure to ensure the property is performing at peak service levels. Maintaining a consistent focus on smooth hotel operations makes it difficult to spend time identifying where you are excelling or falling short.

At Innisfree, we use a cloud-based platform called Revinate to efficiently glean insights from the massive number of online reviews. Revinate aggregates data generated from many online guest reviews into an easy-to-use digital dashboard. It makes it fast and simple for our managers to dive in to ‘Guest Intelligence’ data and identify opportunities to improve guest experiences.

It also gives us the ability to isolate and interpret data in the numerous topics being addressed in a hotel’s reviews, such as front desk, elevators, restaurant, bathrooms, noise and so on. Our digital team produces monthly reputation reports for all properties so we can track our progress enterprise-wide and identify trends.

While it’s important to get as much guest feedback as possible, at Innisfree we think it is much more important to listen to our guests and incorporate their feedback into our day-to-day operations. Improving guest experience by inserting the ‘voice of our customers’ into our hotels is the ultimate goal of our reputation management program.

That’s why when our guests choose an Innisfree Hotel, they can rest assured – on a great pillow, to boot – they’ll have a fun and memorable stay.

Innisfree Hotels is proud to employ an in-house digital marketing agency called Bee Loud, a team of tireless and creative professionals who work hard and have fun telling the story of our company, our guest experience and our philanthropic efforts in the communities we serve. For those of you – like us – who need help managing your workload, we recently devised this go-to list.

TIP #1 – FIND YOUR FLOW
Find focus. Carve out four (4) hours each day for thoughtful work. Wear headphones and tell your colleagues not to interrupt you during flow time. Schedule time for ‘no meetings’ on your calendar and clump your meetings together. Turn off notifications and hide your phone. Plan brain breaks. Set a focus timer. Respect extended quiet times in the office.

TIP #2 – CLEAR YOUR HEAD
Keep a notepad beside you while you work, so if an idea pops in your head you can write it down and stay focused on the task at hand. At the end of each day, process your scribbled notes into a digital task list. Keep a draft email open with all questions you need to ask your boss or teammates, and send at the end of the day.

TIP #3 – DON’T SWITCH TASK
Multitasking is a myth. Every time you switch tasks, you lose time and focus. So do one thing at a time. Talk to one person at a time. Choose a task from your list and work on it until it is done.

TIP #4 – EAT THE FROG
Do hard tasks first. Attach emotions to the tasks on your list, and do the ones that will make you feel the happiest when you check them off.

TIP #5 – PROCESS DAILY AT A SET TIME
Set a time and place to process your tasks every day and wait until that scheduled time.  Process all paper, emails and phone messages. Touch everything only once. Take action by either creating a task on your list, discarding or delegating. Empty your email box every day. Use archive and search functions.

TIP #6 – DO IT NOW
Do it now. Not later. Now. Push hard to finish today’s tasks today.

TIP #7 – USE ALL THE MINUTES
Don’t underestimate the value of small chunks of time. Starting a big task at 4:30? Yes!

TIP #8 – AVOID THE URGENT TYRANT
The tyranny of the urgent refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. Urgent actions often feel important, but have little impact. If you succumb to the tyranny, you can find yourself going days – or even weeks – without touching the important stuff. Productive people are good at spotting the urgent tyrant. They’re willing to ignore or delegate the things that get in the way of important forward momentum.

TIP #9 – DECREASE YOUR GATHERING POINTS
A gathering point is any place where information or tasks accumulate that you need to check and process. This may include your email inbox, spam box, voicemail, Facebook messages, Twitter, your assistant, text messages, Gmail chat, Basecamp, your car, your corporate inbox and your desk. (The average person has 12. Effective people have 6.) Review your gathering points, and remove them where possible.

TIP #10 – USE A PHYSICAL INBOX
Put a box on your desk, and place everything that needs to be processed in it. Everything goes in there as it comes to you. Process it daily.

TIP #11 – GET RID OF CLUTTER
When you come to your office every day and see piles on your desk or office floor, it’s stressful and draining. Cultivate the habit of never putting anything unprocessed anywhere other than your inbox. Be ruthless. Sort everything in your office so everything has a home.  Pens go with pens, staples with staples. Everything is in its home when you leave at night.

TIP #12 – PLAN YOUR WEEK
Create a digital task list (in a cloud) with a product like Basecamp, that you can access from all your devices. Review it on Monday morning and note which tasks you will do on which days. Hold yourself accountable. Be proactive in resolving obstacles. If your task is part of a large project, then touch base with your collaborators and reiterate what you need from them and when. Don’t overestimate what you can do in a day.

TIP #13 – PLAN TOMORROW
The last thing you do every day should be to review your task list and calendar for the following day. Make adjustments as necessary, and remind your teammates what you need from them to remove obstacles. Note what you need to be prepared to execute your schedule smoothly.

TIP #14 – USE YOUR CALENDAR
Make sure every appointment is on your calendar and never double-book. Check and update your calendar daily, and sync your calendar to your phone.

TIP #15 – KEEP AN ‘INSPIRATION’ GATHERING PLACE
Keep a gathering place like Evernote for inspiration and ideas. Schedule a monthly time to clear it out.

BONUS TIP – GET WORK DONE AT WORK
Establish firm boundaries between work and personal time and use these boundaries to force yourself to be productive at work. Give yourself a time budget for tasks and adhere to it.

Protect your most valuable activities – like family, friends, exercise and sunsets.