Analytics, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Latvia, Tourism

City rankings are determined by the industries first-ever developed and academically-verified online reputation index "Global Review IndexTM" (GRI), Evija Baula, PwC marketing and communication manager in Latvia, told LETA.

"Global Review IndexTM" is an online reputation index for individual hotels, hotel branches or hotel chains, and includes all the largest and most important hotel review and travel agency Internet sites.

In the category of four star hotels, Riga with the GRI of 86.51% is in the lead. Hotels in Riga received the highest scores in the categories of best location, neatness and are considered overall most valuable. The lowest score was received in the category of suite and room quality.

For overall three, four and five star hotels, Cape Town received the highest scores in GRI index, service, location and value and with 86% take the first place. In the second place is Vilnius with 84.6%, third – Johannesburg (84.2%), fourth – Edinburgh (83.7%), fifth Marrakesh (83.5%), sixth Prague (83.4%), seventh Warsaw (83%), eight Lisbon (82.7%), ninth Riga (82.6%) and tenth is Abu Dhabi (82.3%).

Research shows that hotels in Eastern Europe online are reviewed higher than in other regions because they can satisfy or completely exceed customers expectations.

Research shows that five star hotels react better to the online reviews than four star hotels. In Riga this is more prevalent than in other regions of the world.

Research found out that a lot of hotel representatives consider negative guest reviews as a burden and do not know how to use that information to their own advantage. Instead, they make excuses and become defensive.

Research data was gathered from 142 travel agencies and hotel review sites from February 28, 2014 through 2015. Research used three, four and five star hotels in 48 cities in the regions of Central Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, informed Baula.