Capturing reviews with GuestRevu for The Cottage Hotel's new website

The Cottage Hotel sits on the cliffs above Harbour Beach in Hope Cove. The original Hope Cottage was built in 1896 between the villages of Inner and Outer Hope (near Salcombe) and now forms the small snug outside of the restaurant. Inside the restaurant above the entrance door, the tiled roof of the cottage's side door can still be seen. When the 'Cottage' first opened in 1927 as a small guesthouse, it was known as Hope Cottage. The Emperor Heile Sellasie was accommodated here during some of his period of exile.

Today, the Cottage Hotel is directed by William & Sarah Ireland and managed by veteran hotelier, Neil Slade.

The Cottage Hotel is best described as quirky and traditional. It provides guests with simple accommodation, good honest food and a splendid Devon welcome. The 35-bedroom hotel offers guests a classic Restaurant, Licenced Bar, Lounge and Sun terrace. Traditional values, a friendly welcome and good old-fashioned service, reminiscent of bygone times, are all assured.

Standing out in a competitive market

The Cottage Hotel lacks the high-end allure of luxury hotels nearby, but what it lacks in fancy decor, it more than makes up for with exceptional service and positive guest experiences. Capturing the positive sentiment that customers have for The Cottage Hotel is a huge challenge in a segmented digital landscape.

Manually pooling reviews from multiple inputs such as Google, TripAdvisor, emails and booking services simply wasn't viable. What's more, presenting those reviews in a consistent and up-to-date way on the hotel's website presented a labour-intensive problem.

Attending to guest feedback during busy times

The hotel is also extremely busy through the summer, and listening to all guest feedback remains essential to maintaining the service excellence the hotel prides itself on. Lending an ear to the thoughts and feelings of guests isn't straightforward without some level of automation and sentiment analysis.

"It's particularly challenging because a guest might leave a review for a week's stay which includes their accommodation, evening dining, breakfast and overall holiday experience, or they might come up from the beach for one of our famous cream teas and write a review about that,” Dan Darcy, Revenue Manager at The Cottage Hotel explains. “We can sell hundreds of cream teas in a week, and in the summer months our hotel accommodation is often sold out. GuestRevu has been essential to helping us manage this volume of guest feedback."

Implementing GuestRevu has been the solution we always needed. We now prompt guests to leave reviews by incorporating a link in our checkout emails that are sent 'post-stay'. GuestRevu helps us gather those reviews in a consistent way and at scale with minimum effort," said Dan. "The majority of guests now leave reviews in this way."

Using GuestRevu's API, The Cottage Hotel are also retrieving those reviews on a weekly basis and displaying them on thier website. This has allowed them to present website users with the most up-to-date reviews, again in a consistent format.

Reviews positively impact multiple departments

GuestRevu has enabled the Cottage Hotel to monitor guest sentiment, react to feedback, gather reviews into one place and use them as an effective marketing tool. Using GuestRevu has revolutionised the hotel’s review handling process, improving guest experiences and access to new custom through their marketing channels.

Improved guest experience

The sentiment analysis is particularly powerful because it allows the Cottage Hotel to focus on customer concerns when they reach a critical mass. The word clouds effectively group sentiment by agreement so that teams can focus on what's affected the most guests, instead of fixating on one issue that affected one guest one time but didn't affect any others. This helps the Cottage Hotel’s management team target resources most efficiently.

Enriched marketing material that resonates with guests

Positive messaging on their website about The Cottage Hotel's reputation for service and experience has improved dramatically since using GuestRevu. Simply being able to present authentic, relevant and timely reviews on the Cottage Hotel’s website is an invaluable marketing asset.