Olery to Provide Technology for World's First Social Media Powered Hotel Classification System
Amsterdam, The Netherlands (PRWEB) December 16, 2013 -- Olery (http://www.olery.com), the leading provider of guest experience management tools for the hospitality industry, announced today that is has signed a deal with the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority to provide them with the technology behind their recently announced next step in in their hotel classification system.
The first step will be to enable the authority to check the star rating against guest reviews by using Olery’s unique and objective Guest Experience IndexTM (GEI). If a certain hotel’s GEI score drops below the minimum that the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority has established for their star rating the system will alert the authority, after which they can investigate the hotel and can take appropriate action accordingly. Next to monitoring to ensure to keep up the desired quality levels in the Emirate, Olery provides an extensive and flexible reporting tool that enables them to see real-time detailed performances of all hotels and apartments in the region. During the first quarter of 2014 this first phase of the system will be live.
“Thanks to Olery’s state-of-the-art technology and reliable platform we are able to create the world’s first hotel classification system that integrates guest reviews into its star rating system” said engineer Omar Al Bishr, head of the Licensing and Classification department of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. “To us, ratings on social review sites and OTAs like TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Expedia and Hotels.com are a clear indication on the satisfaction of guests that visited a property. We think the traditional star rating is outdated, but to keep pace with international travel standards we deliberately chose to first have the guest reviews indirectly influence the system.” In the initial setup, only hotels that under-perform on guest ratings as to be expected on their classification, action is taken to improve its performance. “Thanks to Olery’s detailed analysis we can advise hotels with a sub-standard guest satisfaction exactly where improvements are needed,” adds Al Bishr.
The technology that Olery provides include:
A monitoring tool to check the guest satisfaction for all properties in Abu Dhabi and relate their star rating to their score on Olery’s Guest Experience IndexTM.
Customised monthly reports with the performance of all properties per star rating and for a fixed set of subratings.
Interactive dashboard for a real-time overview of the performance of all properties in the region with the ability to zoom in on specific set of properties (eg. hotels vs. apartments or 4 vs. 5 star hotels).
“Of course we have been advocating the importance of guest reviews for some time now,” said Kim van den Wijngaard, CEO and co-founder of Olery. “But what we are about to achieve together with the Abu Dhabi officials is really a big step in and acknowledgement of Online Reputation Management for destinations. We are really happy to announce that such a progressive tourism authority puts their trust in our platform that we’ve been carefully working on in making it one of the most reliable in the market.”
Dr. Wouter Hensens, Project Director for Exceed Hospitality who facilitated the project, thinks that the continuous growth and influence of online review platforms in hotel buying decisions needs to be acknowledged in hotel rating systems: “Current classification systems are often dysfunctional as they are voluntary; more and more hotels decide to let go of them and rely solely on online feedback.” According to Hensens, Olery and the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority are touching the core of current issues in hotel classification systems with this solution. “Testimony to this success are the number of enquiries that Exceed Hospitality and Olery have received following the first announcements on the integration for Abu Dhabi,” says Dr. Essa Faqih, managing partner of Exceed Hospitality.
To learn more about Olery’s products for destinations and authorities in the hospitality industry, please visit http://www.olery.com/destinations.
Peter Boermans, Olery, http://www.olery.com, +31 655531313, [email protected]
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