Aptech Translates Web Reviews, Survey Card Comments into Metrics for Analysis

Aptech is now leveraging text analytics to include guest sentiment tracking in its Execuvue Business Intelligence System. Execuvue's sentiment tracking system enables managers to evaluate and compare guest sentiment scores for multiple properties on one screen and draw parallels with occupancy, RevPAR, and other performance management indicators to give operators a 360-degree view of each of their properties' performance. Execuvue's sentiment data is refreshed weekly from social media websites that include Trip Advisor and Expedia. In addition, Aptech established relationships with hotel brands to gather guest score-card information and integrate it with Execuvue for reporting in multiple formats that enables understanding of the factors affecting performance.

The Execuvue Sentiment Engine measures the two primary sources of guest satisfaction information:

• Brand data, including email surveys and brand comment cards, and;
• Web data from social media sites and hotel review sites.

The system collects data from all sources, including written comments and, in conjunction with Clarabridge, uses a natural language processing program to extract written speech prompts and then converts them to measurable scores. Additionally, it provides drill down capabilities so operators can view individual guest comments that make up the sentiment metrics.

The sentiment analysis process

• Guests provide feedback via brand surveys or web posts on TripAdvisor, Expedia, etc.;
• Aptech collects the feedback via standardized data exports from brand surveys and web crawlers that extract data from web posts;
• Text is quantified using "Natural Language Processing" that converts clauses, tags, and parts of speech and assigns a numerical value to a guest's editorial review for analysis.

Managers can view performance metrics side-by-side with satisfaction survey and guest opinion data and then drill down to identify specific reasons for changes in occupancy. A click on the metric takes operators directly to the postings that contributed to the overall score.