Bookassist Partners with TrustYou to Bring Reputation Alert Service to Hotels

June 28, 2011 - PRLog -- Technology and online strategy company for hotels Bookassist (http://www.bookassist.com) has today launched Reputation Alert, a new service to allow hotels to continually track online customer comments and reviews across hundreds of social media sites and bring them together in one convenient place. The service helps hotels create effective corrective action plans based on the results. Reputation Alert will dramatically simplify the burden faced by hotels today in monitoring what is said about them online and managing their online reputation.

The service is available this month to all Bookassist’s clients for a competitive annual fee and can be accessed directly through their existing Bookassist hotel administration system.

Bookassist has partnered with TrustYou (http://www.trustyou.com), the innovative semantic search and social media management specialists, for the provision of automatic online reviews monitoring that forms the core of the Reputation Alert service. In addition to TrustYou services, Reputation Alert will also automatically collect reviews from hotel guests who use the hotel’s web booking engine. As part of the service, Bookassist Account Managers for each hotel will additionally monitor online review data and work to create corrective action plans for hotel clients to actively improve online reputation.

“Online reputation is a critical influencer in decisions to book hotels", said Dr Des O'Mahony, Bookassist CEO and Founder. “With the proliferation of online review services and social media, it has become a daunting task for hotels to stay on top of their reputation, and to quickly act on that information. Reputation Alert solves this problem.”

“We are delighted to integrate TrustYou’s social data platform and semantic analysis into Bookassist’s systems to enrich their service. With our combined forces we are able to help hoteliers to collect, analyze and engage with customer reviews throughout the social web” said Benjamin Jost, TrustYou CEO and Co-Founder.

The service is not just about getting the volume of online information into manageable form. Hotels also need to act on this information and quickly correct issues arising. Bookassist Account Managers, as part of the Reputation Alert service, will work with the collected reputation data and with the hotels to create responsive action plans.

“No amount of online technology will make up for poor offline service”, says O’Mahony. “Hotels must use Reputation Alert as a monitor of their service levels and learn from what their guests are saying in order to begin the reputation improvement process”.

The service has already been in trial for a number of weeks and has received strongly positive reviews.

"It's challenging trying to monitor what is being said about our hotel. With Reputation Alert we can see everything on review and social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Flickr. This will enable us to manage, respond and act very quickly" commented Denise Corboy, Director of Sales at Camden Court Hotel in Dublin (camdencourthotel.com).

"Bookassist’s Reputation Alert gives me a greater insight into what people are saying online about my property. I can also very quickly benchmark against my competitors and look for opportunities to differentiate myself from them. I particularly like the facility to respond to guest reviews directly from within system" said Martin Cassidy of Cassidy’s Hotel in Dublin (cassidyshotel.com)

"Reputation Alert is a very useful tool which will assist us in listening to what our guests are saying online. We gain valuable data allowing us to improve our overall service and product quickly", said  Kim Murtagh, Sales and Marketing Manager at Stillorgan Park Hotel (stillorganpark.com).

Reputation Alert, incorporating TrustYou services, is rolled out this month in all of Bookassist’s key markets. For more information, see http://bookassist.org/reputation

Bookassist® (bookassist.org) creates and manages online strategies for hotels and groups and is one of the leading hotel booking technology and online marketing providers in Europe. Headquartered in Dublin, with offices in Madrid, Paris, Rome, Vienna and Prague, Bookassist is a Deloitte Fast 50 Technology Company and Top 100 Deloitte Technology Company in Europe. The company has received numerous awards in Online Trade, Online Marketing, and Technological Innovation including the Irish Internet Association’s NetVisionary Internet Entrepreneur Award.

TrustYou gathers and semantically structures opinions found online in reviews, posts, and comments, and makes them accessible through a range of applications and APIs. TrustYou-Analytics, the leading social media management tool worldwide, allows hoteliers, destinations, and travel companies to analyze and react to the quality and reputation of their hotels according to the data collected from reviews posted online. Current customers include hundreds of hotels and travel giants such as InterContinental Hotels, Best Western Hotels, Maritim Hotels, Worldhotels, Trust International, Micros-Fidelio, HolidayCheck and many more. TrustYou was founded in 2008 by Jakob Riegger and Benjamin Jost. In November 2010, PhoCusWright honoured and recognized TrustYou as one of the leading innovators in travel.

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Bookassist® creates and manages online strategies for hotels and hotel groups and is one of the top hotel booking engine and online marketing providers in Europe. With hedquarters in Dublin, Ireland, Bookassist has additional offices across Europe in Spain, France, Czech Republic, Austria and Italy.