Changes in dealing with negative reviews

We hear a lot about how hoteliers now need to respond to online customer reviews, especially the ones on Tripadvisor.
The article I picked this week tackles this topic again, however it highlights some important aspects and what's more, it brings up some interesting reactions from the USA Today readers.

It is clear to everyone (or so it should) that monitoring internet reviews and other social media such as blogs and Facebook is crucial for hoteliers to control their hotel's image. To prove it, some recent changes were made by hoteliers to monitor their image on the internet. Hilton implemented a new software that will aggregate reviews and comments from the internet, Marriott uses ReviewAnalyst, other hotels use similar products. As a result, hoteliers have started to further take into consideration the comments and reviews left by guests, hence the staggering increase in 203% of replies from hotels to guests on Tripadvisor last year.

But what was most interesting was the comments left by the readers of the online newspaper. Some readers relate how they first look at the hotel's description but don't stop there. They carry out their own investigation: they go on Google maps to check the location and use the Street View option to make sure this is a nice area (guests complained about hotels photoshopping images to make the surroundings look better), they also go to Flickr to see whether the pictures taken by previous guests confirm the ones taken by the hotel, they email the guests who left comments, etc.

As a future hotelier, I think this is quite significant: guests are more and more knowledgeable about the services and the quality offered by hotels, and it is not in the hoteliers' best interest to lie about them (other guests reported fake reviews from hoteliers). The opportunities to check the veracity of what is said on the hotel's website are many.
Hotels had better concentrate their energy on monitoring these reviews but also on delivering the best service possible, which is always the true basis for a hotel's success.