After initially balking, most hotel companies have come to embrace TripAdvisor and the user-generated content (UGC) model—well, maybe they don’t all embrace it, but most at least tolerate it. One major hotel company has gone a step further.

On Monday, Starwood Hotels & Resorts announced the launch of its own UGC system, where guests can post free-form reviews about properties as well as provide ratings on various individual elements, including overall stay, room comfort and cleanliness, facility expectations and whether staff met their needs.

The company claims to be the first major global hotel brand to establish online consumer reviews, and the move follows findings from a recent survey where nearly 85 percent of members of Starwood’s loyalty program, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), said they find value in consumer ratings and reviews on travel sites.

To find the new reviews, go to the home page of any of Starwood’s individual brands—Sheraton, Westin, St. Regis, W, Four Points, Le Meridien, The Luxury Collection, Aloft and Element—then click on the “Guest Reviews” link toward the bottom of the page, near the social media links. You’ll be taken to a landing page where you select a region, country and city, which then generates a list of Starwood hotels in that destination that you can choose from.

Viewers of the new Starwood reviews also can filter content to see the information that is most relevant to them, such as overall star rating, a reviewer’s purpose and frequency of travel, and their SPG level.

To write a review, SPG members can sign in; other guests need to provide the confirmation numbers of their stays, which had to have taken place within the 18 months prior to posting their write-ups. Reviews also can be shared through social media channels, including both personal and property Facebook pages and Twitter.

As noted in USA Today, Starwood will first check reviews for profanity before publishing and confirm the reviewer’s stay, but once a review has been confirmed, Starwood will publish it, whether it’s positive or negative.

A property has to receive at least five reviews before the ratings will be published. Of course, being that the program is brand new, there aren’t many reviews available yet. One of the first to reach the five-review threshold is the Sheraton Hua Hin Resort in Thailand. (Only three are viewable from the U.S. website as the other two are written in German.)

Reviews will remain on the sites indefinitely, and should someone wish to alter their review, they can’t change the original text, but they can comment on their original post, said Jennifer Leemann, a Starwood spokesperson.

I’m optimistic about the quality of the reviews that eventually will be generated on the Starwood properties, mainly because of the checks in place to ensure the postings are from actual guests and not competitors out to skew the ratings, which has been an issue for TripAdvisor, and that a reviewer has to have stayed at the property relatively recently.

SPG members will begin receiving notification of the new service this week, and those guests are the ones most likely to write the bulk of the first reviews.

Photo: Starwood

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