Data Darwinism: Of Survival and Reviews

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Reviews do matter, but what seems to matter more is who writes them, and the question, can they be predicted?
And it seems Airbnb is saying, "yes."

Booking an Airbnb place anywhere can be a 50-50 proposition, but it's the very unpredictability and rich individuality of each place that makes the stays (and the site) so undeniably attractive. 

In a delightful comment, GigaOm, a data science and social web site, says reviews do indeed matter more and more because we are in an age of "Data Darwinism," where "those who get the best reviews thrive."

So what did Airbnb discover? Blog post author Riley Newman reports that youngish guests and males give better reviews.

• Older hosts and female hosts get better reviews
• Earlier booking correlates  with better reviews
• Smaller groups tend to give better reviews
• Tthe best city to stay in according to positive reviews, is Tampa, Florida

Does this data matter? Should, as Om asks, Airbnb hosts begin to chose potential guests based in part on factors like gender, age, group size?

While it's true that analyzing reviews is not an exact science, or a science at all, given the role data is playing in todays travel marketing world, we suspect all sites with anything to offer will offer them to targeted groups...like those who write the best reviews.

But post author Newman does a good job in nuancing the results.

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Still, we suspect the analysis will find its way quickly into targeted marketing. And why not?

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Comments

  • Thanks both for the lively exchange and useful dialogue. What I find particularly depressing is that travel as a category should be versatile, imaginative and forward- thinking. It's built, in part on fantasy and wish or dream-fulfillment, which should lead to dynamic marketing and imaginative customer service.
    Not the case, sadly

    Retail seems way ahead of travel in its responsiveness and approaches to customers, as well as what offers and how it markets.

    At ant rate, thanks again Vincent and Anil.
    Cheers
  • I like the rant Anil because I'm sick of all the fees. Baggage fees, meals on flights because I remember when meals were free, fees for internet so I'm paying 20 bucks to Skype my grandkids. We pack food for flights just as you said and we stay at hotels like Courtyard and HOliday Inn because they're nice and they don't nickel and dime us for the internet or for breakfast.

  • Data mining is not high art. It is about good analysis. With all the data that is gathered, one has to ask the right questions to derive the right answers from the raw data. Since most hotels do not breakout or publicly publish the revenue/room/night it is difficult to cull business intelligence out of available information.

    With respect, to internet connection: Hotel chains do not learn. And will not learn, given the diversity of their portfolio and the franchisee leeway, it is hard to fathom their logic. 

    Frequent flyers are also frequent guests and invariably members of various loyalty programs. If a hotel chain, charges $20+/night on their premium brand properties, and free internet in their mid-range properties, where do you think a savvy businessperson would go ? Most of the people in that sub-group I have spoken to, have reduced their stays from Anchor brands to middle brands of a chain. e.g from a JWM to Courtyard; from Intercontinental to Holiday Inn etc.

    These for-pay internet related charges will go the way of $3/min phone charges. With the advent of cellphones, most hotels saw a deep decline in their phone usages. With cellphone thetering and data plans, dependence on for-pay-internet will decline too.

    The big chains and the  heavyweights of the  American tourism industry move like hippopotamus; from airlines charging for checked baggage and food, to hotels charging for bottle of water and internet. Already gizmos are coming into the market that will address the internet charging syndrome, and savvy travelers on short haul flights carry sandwich(s) or packed meals before arriving at he airport. 

    [Sorry for the rant.]

  • No surprise there, thanks, Ed. The real surprise is the resistance by the hotels to change their policy regarding paid/unreliable internet connection.

    Even after, for example, after speaking direclty two or three times to decision-makers at a luxurty chain hotel, and having them totally agree they need to offer better/free internet connection, no change was made. Three years later

    Must be tough to give up a revenue stream...

    Cheers than thanks

  •  J.D. Powers' 2013 North American Hotel Satisfaction Index study just came out. Won't drone on with the details; bottom line is, hotel guests are surprisingly satisfied with hotels -- especially hotel staff -- but when they can't get a good internet connection, they get cranky, very cranky. 

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