March 1st, 2023, Janice Fernandes
Hotels are already well entrenched on social media – Cavo Tagoo Mykonos, for example, has almost 2m Instagram followers. But what role do reviews on platforms like YouTube and TikTok play in the hotel-booking process?
In a recent YouGov survey conducted across 17 global markets, we asked consumers about the kinds of products/ services for which they would check social media before purchasing. Mobile phones (45%) and other technology products like TVs (43%) register the highest share of consumers who lean on social media reviews to make a purchase decision. Reviews also play an important role for hotels, which trail mobiles closely at 43%. Checking social media reviews before purchasing a media streaming subscription shows up lower (14%), but still higher than airports (9%) and gambling companies (5%).
Polling data shows that Europeans are heavily reliant on social media reviews before booking their hotel stay. Italy and Spain have the highest percentage of consumers who book a hotel stay based on social media reviews, with more than half of consumers in both countries saying so (56%). They are closely followed by Sweden (49%), Germany (48%), Poland (47%) and UK (44%). Although slightly lower than the global average (43%), over two in five consumers in Denmark (42%) and France (41%) also check social media reviews for hotels.
In APAC, markets are divided on the subject. Singapore has the highest percentage of people checking hotel reviews posted on social media (51%), followed closely by Hong Kong (50%). Indonesia also has a relatively high percentage at 42%. The rest of the APAC markets studied in this survey are below the global average – China (37%), India (36%) and Australia (36%).
The US is the only country where less than a third of consumers (27%) say they check social media reviews before deciding which hotel to book. Canada (39%) also registers below the global average but it’s still considerably higher than its neighbor.
More than a third of consumers in the UAE (38%) say they check hotel reviews on social media.
Globally, women are more likely than men to check hotel reviews (47% vs. 39%), as are older consumers compared to younger ones (45% of 55+-year-olds vs. 35% of 18-24-year-olds). This pattern is somewhat consistent across markets – in Britain a third of 18-24-year-olds (35%) check social media reviews before booking hotels compared to 49% of those over 55 years. In the US, it’s those aged between 35 to 44 years who are most likely to base their hotel bookings off social media reviews (31%), followed by 25-34-year-olds and those over 55 (28% both).
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 514 and 2011 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in November 2022. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.
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