Destination marketing expert Bill Geist maintains an excellent and very active blog called Bill Geist’s Zeitgeist.

Bill has terrific perspective around destination marketing, and he intuitively believes that more transparency in marketing through social media helps to build trust with visitors and consumers.

Yesterday, the Zeitgeist featured a post reminding that adding authentic, dynamic customer reviews on travel websites simply makes good business sense. And for good reason too:

Excerpted from Bill’s Blog:

“In Tuesday’s Z-News, we opined on the reticence on the part of some destination marketers to allow consumer generated comments on their websites. We, naturally, think it’s a necessary step…but that’s just us.

Minutes after the Z-News was posted, I came across an interesting bit of research (thanks to Ben at the Church of the Customer Blog) that indicates that 77% of businesses that included online consumer reviews are seeing increased site traffic…and 42% report higher average order values.

Just a little more for your pipe…”

Many organizations still resist featuring customer reviews on their sites for fear of negative feedback, but we have to remember that a chance to overcome an objective or solve a customer problem can be a chance to win-over that customer, guest, or visitor for life.