Type of project: HOSPITALITY TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING
h2c’s long-term assistance of Penta Hotels’ Online Reputation Management
ABOUT THE CLIENT
Penta Hotels Worldwide GmbH, with its central office in Frankfurt, operates 23 hotels worldwide. With 22 properties in Europe (9 in Germany) and one in Moscow, Europe is the chain’s main market. Penta Hotels represent a new generation of neighborhood lifestyle hotels offering modern-minded individuals and business travelers comfort and style in a relaxed atmosphere. Known for its unique interior design and attitude, the lifestyle brand stands for true innovation in the industry’s upper-midscale segment. Many successful projects, such as monitoring penta’s ORM processes, have been realized by h2c. Penta Hotels was the first client on h2c’s static content management platform Conttessa. Since then 26 properties have been onboarded.
CLIENTS’ OPINION
Working with h2c has streamlined our processes, and helped Penta Hotels in our goal to deliver an authentic guest experience consistently across the group. With the support of h2c, we have been able to accurately track and measure the KPI’s of each hotel in our brand, ensuring that all our guests are acknowledged and our brand reputation grows. Additional research topics provided by h2c have further aided Penta Hotels to deliver new innovations catered for the guest experience. Overall, the support received from h2c has allowed Penta Hotels to operate more efficiently and grow strategically.
Alex Montano, Corporate Operations Manager
OBJECTIVE
Penta assigned h2c to provide operational and strategic support for their Online Reputation Management (ORM). The main goals are to improve the quality of review responses, guarantee effective internal processes and ensure timely reactions to all guest reviews. These measures are acknowledged as major revenue drivers. For this reason, Penta Hotels’ clear objectives are to continuously increase their service quality, brand reputation and competitiveness.
CHALLENGES
Answering and monitoring guest reviews in a timely manner across different channels is crucial for a sound online reputation. This is a time-consuming task handled by each individual hotel. It soon became clear that a centralized monitoring is essential for success, which called for upgraded Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) and customized reporting. On-demand reporting must continuously highlight the critical areas requiring improvements.
WORK
Weekly Checks
The short-term monitoring process includes h2c checks of each Penta hotel by using their ORM tool on a weekly basis. h2c’s actions cover the monitoring of guest reviews and the respective hotel replies, creation of tickets, and communication with the hotel in case of low performance or questions.
Monthly Reporting
To provide Penta Hotels’ head office with an overview of the group’s performance, h2c creates a customized monthly report with relevant ORM KPIs set by Penta Hotels. Low performing hotels are contacted by h2c and are offered customized support services.
ORM Manual
A manual was created, explaining the main guest review management tasks and describing how to clearly define SOPs. Along with the monthly reporting goals, ORM KPIs were defined and are explained in the manual. In order to keep track with user interface and/or functionality changes of the ORM tool, the manual is updated on a regular basis. h2c is the first point of contact for answering the hotels’ questions and introduces the ORM tool and guidelines to new employees.
RESULTS
With the Penta Hotels ORM standards clearly communicated and implemented, all hotels of the chain now have improved the frequency of monitoring and professionally responding to their guest reviews. Since project start in 2014, the Review Response Coverage has significantly increased for all hotels. Based on h2c’s permanent operational and strategic support, Penta Hotels’ corporate office was able to notably free up resources and improve the brand’s overall online reputation. While the ORM manual simplifies new staff member training, all properties now have reached the same ORM quality standard.
