Sudipta Dev – Mumbai
RepuFact hotel reputation management start-up launched its first product called RepuFact.com on July 1 this year. The product is a business intelligence plus semantics analysis tool. It enables hotels to get consolidate reviews from 126 portals across the world. These reviews in different languages are translated into English. “There are three parts to the technology – aggregating reviews from across the world (blogs, Tripadvisors, or wherever the hotel is mentioned). This content is given to the hotel to figure out what their customers are saying globally, for instance the review might be in German – there are certain hotels that cater to certain demographics. The second thing is that we have put together a semantics analysis of that review (the positives and negatives customers are talking about),” said Deepak Mavinkure, founder and CEO, RepuFact, adding that, the service also gives data on how all this impacts the bottom line and the top line.
The product is software as a solution. A login id and password is given to clients. Hotels tie-up with the company as a retainer, for at least six months. “This is because a lot of time and effort goes into building the reviews and facts together. They have real time access to it. Early morning when a revenue manager walks in and logins to a site he knows what reviews have come in from different parts of the world,” stated Mavinkure, pointing out that as the content is third party the hotel cannot show it on its website, but the revenue manager can share the content internally with other departments for necessary action. Already 60 customers have letter of intent with the company, including some big names in the hospitality industry. The company is also in the process of signing up with a large hotel consolidator. RepuFact is helpful to hotels, irrespective of category, asserted Mavinkure, adding that one of the clients is Poppy, a chain of two-star and three-star hotels in Tier II and Tier III locations in Tamil Nadu like Coimbatore and Madurai.
“We have been working on this product for seven-eight months now and one of the strengths that we bring to the table is our relationship with the hotel industry at the GM and revenue manager level,” said Mavinkure (he was part of the founding team at Travelguru, acquired by Travelocity in 2010 and later sold out to Yatra in 2012).