TOURISM AWARDS: THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR CONSUMER RATING SCORE

As the excitement of the approaching Australian Tourism Awards builds and visitation to the state remains high, now is the ideal time to encourage increased consumer reviews of your tourism product/s. Firstly, because it will benefit your business if you leverage the consumer engagement, marketing, and data collection opportunities that online reviews provide. Secondly, those reviews will help you out if you’re planning on entering the Tasmanian Tourism Awards this year.

Introduced in 2021 in response to industry feedback, the Tourism Awards program now includes a Consumer Rating Score, applicable at both state and national level. This change was established to achieve a final score which delved beyond the written submission, site visit, and online review aspects of the program (all of which focus on how the business presents itself), to encompass the consumer perspective also. Including this element provides a more robust result that considers visitor sentiment across numerous channels throughout the entire qualifying period, garnered from each business’ Global Review Index score (GRI).

The GRI is generated by ReviewPro, one of the world’s leading review aggregator platforms, which collates reviews from 140+ possible channels globally, in more than 45 different languages. All accredited operators are entitled to a free ReviewPro account to help you monitor, manage, and benchmark your online reviews. To activate yours, login to the accreditation portal, locate the ReviewPro section at the bottom right of your dashboard, and click ‘verify’.

Depending on the category you have entered, your Consumer Rating score could be worth up to a total of 20 marks (most are), so it’s quite a significant contribution to your final score. There are of course some exceptions to this, but entrants can find a breakdown of scoring for their particular category on the final page of their Questions and Criteria document once the program is launched – or contact me in the interim.

ReviewPro uses an algorithm to calculate a business’ online reputation on any given day, based on the reviews it has received. The GRI score for a particular timeframe is calculated by averaging daily scores across the period – so in the case of the awards program we are looking at the qualifying period from 1st of July to the 30th of June.

To generate a GRI for the awards, a business needs to have received a minimum of 25 online reviews during the qualifying period, which can be from any of the available channels. It’s worth noting that, unfortunately, ReviewPro doesn’t incorporate Airbnb as it is one of the few channels that doesn’t allow access. This has been a slight stumbling block for some entrants previously and has also inspired some last-minute hustling from past entrants!

If your business is considering entering this year’s awards but your reviews are all coming in through Airbnb, or your review volume is low, you may want to consider what you can do to start encouraging visitors to review their experience with you on either Google or TripAdvisor. This can be as simple as a QR code strategically placed within your business or on a brochure/card that takes them directly to your Google or TripAdvisor listing, a timely verbal reminder, or a followup email thanking guests for their patronage and asking for their feedback (remember to include the direct link/s so it’s easy for them).

With plenty of locals and visitors touring the state, and a little gentle encouragement, you should be well on your way to achieving enough reviews to generate a GRI score over the coming months – and avoiding any lastminute panic in May/ June!

Kelly Woolley Tasmanian Tourism Awards Entrant Support Program Manager