Customer Reviews And Their Effect On Hotel Booking.

Travelers get easily influenced by many different aspects when booking a hotel for their stay at a planned destination; everything ranging from free wifi for residents, gym facilities and maybe a swimming pool to make their stay even more accommodating.

Yet one of the most important ones are not just the good pictures of the facility or the amenities offered but the reviews people leave on the site after their stay at the hotels. These reviews highly influence so many potential hotel clients, that if a hotel has too many negative reviews and very few stars it's easy to skip it and go on to the next.

One of the things we do to break down the barriers of travelling in Uganda, is listing reviews of hotels by Jumia Travel customers. After staying at the hotel, every customer rates the hotel between 0 and 10 on different dimensions like security, accessibility staff and comfort and might add more specific feedback to the review. The objective is twofold: the reviews help future Jumia Travel customers to choose their perfect place to stay, and at the same time they help hotels to improve their services. We believe that these two together contribute to growing the hospitality and tourism business in Uganda.

One might ask what makes a hotel get very bad reviews from clients when they clearly have; good views, well fitted rooms and good amenities? These can range from a variety of reasons

• Poor client service from some of the staff members which comes in many ways; theft in the rooms, rudeness to customers, delay in services asked for by the residents among many others.

• The hotel’s facilities not meeting the standards of the traveler.

• Unresponsiveness by managers when inquiries are sent in affecting communication.

A hotel manager can actually look through the reviews given and use them to improve by making sure they are responsive to what their customers need with making changes plus improvements where necessary.

One of the things Jumia Travel does to break down the barriers of travelling in Africa, is listing reviews of hotels by customers. After staying at the hotel, every customer rates the hotel between 0 and 10 on different dimensions like security, accessibility staff and comfort and might add more specific feedback to the review. The objective is twofold: the reviews help future customers to choose their perfect place to stay, and at the same time they help hotels to improve their services. We believe that these two together contribute to growing the hospitality and tourism business on the continent. This process is called Customer's' Selection and is a carefully selected set of hotels on the website, that are well-appreciated by customers and marked with a thumbs-up icon. It is important to recognize the hotels that have received an impressive average rating above 7.0 by a representative amount of customers coming from our website. To celebrate this achievement together with such hotels, They are provided with with free promotional material to display at their premises and free additional online visibility on the website. It is imperative for Jumia Travel’s existence to offer reliable properties that deliver great value for money to our customers, so we are very excited about this selection of hotels. At the moment, there are over 20,000 active partners on Jumia Travel of which only about 350 are part of this exclusive selection. In time, more hotels are expected to be apart of this selection, because it shows the hotel industry cares about the customers' experience and understands the importance of online information. The first responses of hotel managers becoming part of the Customers' Choice selection are happy about the initiative.