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NEW DELHI: Goibibo.com, India’s largest hotels and accommodation aggregator has reached 6,00,000 ratings and reviews across 20,000 hotels in India. The company expects to expand ratings and reviews to 37,000 hotels by March 2016 with the total volume reaching 1 mn ratings, making Goibibo the largest aggregator of “User Generated Content “ in the online travel space in India.
Unlike other OTA’s that publish TripAdvisor's ratings and reviews, Goibibo has created its own UGC engine (User generated content) for ratings, photo reviews and Question and Answers. Goibibo is also the first OTA in the world to leverage the power of pictures via 'Photo reviews' and also harness the power of the knowledge of the community for its QnA product.
“Photo Reviews and “Question And Answers” are mobile first features launched to strengthen UGC within Goibibo community. 70% of hotels on Goibibo have "user generated Photo reviews and ratings”. Typical type of picture reviews generated by consumers comprise photos of rooms, amenities, condition of the rooms, bathrooms, showers, hotel lobby, swimming pools besides a lot of pictures of surroundings of the hotels and places near by. Visitors to the app and hotel owners are also given the ability to communicate with the raters and reviewers thereby creating a strong feedback loop.
Launched last week, the "Question And Answers” feature enables consumers to tap into the knowledge of other travellers and at the same time get responses from hotels before making a purchase decision. Launched recently as a mobile first offering, this feature is attracting unique questions such as "things to do around the hotel” ; "how to find the best places to eat" ; "Cheapest way to rent something or reach some where in the vicinity of the hotel” ; “questions related to sight seeing etc.
Says Ashish Kashyap, Founder & CEO of ibiboGroup (Goibibo, redBus, Ryde) : “12% to 15% of bookers on Goibibo participate in generating ratings, Photo reviews etc. User generated content has significantly enhanced the trust between travellers and hotel owners. This is clearly visible in our conversion rates and engagement rates. These innovations have also enabled us to strengthen the network effects in our hotels vertical. Besides being the largest online booking engine for hotels we are also now one of the leading travel communities in India. Ratings and Reviews form an important part of the ranking algorithm of hotels thereby directly impacting their business on goibibo’s’ network”.
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