The hospitality and leisure sector could add £3.2bn to the UK economy by improving how customer feedback is used, according to Barclays.
The Barclays Feedback Economy report reveals 59% of consumers already find online feedback helps them in determining where they visit and 45% are more likely to leave a review today compared to 18 months ago.
For the 25-34-year-old bracket, 70% say online reviews are important in swaying their decisions.
Meanwhile 60% of businesses report a boost ion trade as a result of feedback left by customers.
The report calculates that a successful hospitality and leisure sector has the potential to add an extra £2bn to the UK economy with the impact on the sector’s large supply chain contributing a further £1.2bn.
Mike Saul, head of hospitality and leisure at Barclays, said: “The rise of feedback sites has been a disruptive force within the hospitality industry over the past decade. Our research reveals that those working in the UK hospitality and leisure industry feel that these faster, easier and simpler feedback mechanisms are a good thing for the industry – resulting in more agile businesses better able to serve the evolving needs of consumers.
“However, there is even more that the hospitality industry can do to capitalise on this opportunity. Our research shows that being more responsive to customer feedback could increase the value of the UK hospitality and leisure industry to the wider economy by more than £3 billion over the next decade.”
Businesses are deriving a range of benefits from online feedback such as more repeat business (63%) or the identification of issues within the business (61%). However, the majority (63%) of businesses are not currently managing feedback in the long term or maintaining records in a formal Customer Relationship Management system.
Moreover, two thirds of the hospitality and leisure industry (66%) expect the importance of online feedback websites to increase over the next 18 months. In response, 73% of businesses plan to make changes over the next five years. More than a quarter (27%) will be investing in specialist staff training to manage customer feedback, close to a quarter (22%) expect to appoint a dedicated staff member or team and 13% anticipate working with an external consultancy or specialist feedback management agency.
Barclays’ survey of those working within the hospitality and leisure industry revealed that overall, TripAdvisor was seen to be the most relevant online feedback site, with 60% of respondents citing the website as being relevant to their business.
The traditional route of professional reviews in guidebooks is in decline, seen as relevant by less than one quarter of the sector (23%). Professional reviews by newspapers and magazines fare better, rated as relevant by a third (33%) of the sector, rising to nearly half of bars and pubs (46%).
Intermediary sites such as Booking.com and OpenTable are also already seen as increasingly important in driving trade, with a majority (67%) of all hotels and B&Bs and 28% of restaurants rating these sites as relevant to their business.
