Starwood enables guest reviews on its own website

US global hotel owner Starwood Hotels and Resorts has opened up its own websites to allow guests to share their experiences staying at its various branded hotels.

The hotel company hoped that by being transparent about its customers’ opinions and experiences will increase loyalty and win new customers, encouraging both camps to be “more engaged with the company and more likely to book repeat stays” it told US media.

"We are confident in our hotels," Chris Holdren, the senior vice president who runs the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) loyalty programme said.

Starwood has created a rating system so that once there are enough reviews, a rating can be put on a particular hotel and potential guests will be able to sort by different categories of ratings.

It also fills a customer-service function, as Starwood "has bolstered its system to follow up complaints with individual hotels", according to US Today newspaper.

The system already in place was constructed to deal with complaints about Starwood hotels that have been found on social-media sites.

Holdren said he expects many reviews will be written by Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) members, who stay in Starwood hotels more than 50 nights a year.

He also pointed out that a guest's stay would need to be verified before a post goes up on the site in order to keep out nasty reviews from competitors.

However, Holdren promised that all reviews - good, bad or indifferent - would be visible online as long as they did not contain profanity.