A Psychologist Walked Into a Hotel. Nobody Listened.
TripAdvisor data shows that 53% of travellers won't book a hotel that has no reviews at all. Not bad reviews. No reviews. Zero. Meanwhile, 72% of travellers read at least 6 to 12 reviews before making a booking decision. And a single unanswered negative review — surrounded by dozens of positive ones — measurably reduces trust.
Most hoteliers know this.
Here is what fewer people talk about.
Guests don't read reviews to make decisions. They read reviews to confirm decisions they've already made emotionally. The research is clear on this. By the time someone is scrolling through your TripAdvisor page, they have usually already chosen you. They are looking for permission. They are looking for other people who made the same choice and survived — preferably thrived.
This is social proof.
The study that hotels forgot.
In 2008, psychologists Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius published a study in the Journal of Consumer Research. The setting was a hotel. The subject was towels.
At the time, most hotels had already introduced towel reuse programmes. The standard bathroom card appealed to environmental responsibility — save water, save energy, help the planet. Guests participated at a baseline rate that nobody found particularly inspiring. What struck the researchers, however, was something else entirely: not a single hotel card they encountered actually told guests what other guests were doing. The social norm — that the vast majority of guests already reused their towels — was sitting there, unused, while hotels kept printing cards about the environment.
So they ran two experiments. Over 80 days, across 190 rooms, tracking 1,058 instances of potential towel reuse. And then a second experiment — 1,595 instances across 53 days in the same hotel. Seven different messages in total. The guests had no idea they were part of a study.
Experiment 1. Two messages.
The standard card read:
“HELP SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
You can show your respect for nature and help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”
The new card read:
“JOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
Almost 75% of guests who are asked to participate in our new resource savings program do help by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”
Same hotel. Same rooms. Same guests. Nine percentage points higher — from changing the message on a card.
Experiment 2. Five messages.
The researchers wanted to go further. If telling guests what other guests do works — does it matter which guests you reference? They tested five variations, each pointing to a different reference group.
The standard environmental card again:
“HELP SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
You can show your respect for nature and help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”
The guest identity card — hotel-wide:
“JOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75% of the guests participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”
The citizen identity card:
“JOIN YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75% of the guests participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow citizens in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”
The gender identity card:
“JOIN THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 76% of the women and 74% of the men participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join the other men and women in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”
And then the one that changed everything:
“JOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75% of the guests who stayed in this room (#313) participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”
Result: 49.3%
Not guests in general. Not fellow citizens. Not men and women broadly. Guests who stayed in this specific room. Before you. In this exact spot where you are standing right now.
Here is the detail that makes this finding genuinely remarkable. Before the experiment, the researchers tested how personally meaningful each of these group identities felt to participants. Being a citizen scored highly. Gender identity scored highly. Being a hotel guest scored low. And being a guest in a particular room scored lowest of all — the least important, least meaningful group identity of the five tested.
Importance of Social Identities
The least meaningful group produced the highest compliance. By a significant margin.
Experiment 2: Results
Proximity beats personal importance. Where you are matters more than who you are. The closer the social proof, the stronger the pull — even when the group it references means almost nothing to you personally.
The study was published in one of the most cited journals in consumer research. It was discussed at conferences. Cialdini referenced it in his follow-up book Yes! — 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. It made the rounds in marketing and academic circles.
And then hotels went back to printing the same environmental card they had always printed.
What would your hotel look like if it ran on science?
Imagine walking through a hotel where someone had actually read a couple of the researches.
At the bar, a small sign: "2,340 Aperol Spritzes served this season." At the breakfast buffet: "Our eggs benedict — the most ordered dish at this buffet for the third year running." On the room service menu: "Our most ordered dish after 10pm." At check-in: "You booked a standard room. We actually still have two sea view rooms available tonight — they're our most requested upgrade. Would you like to secure yours?" At the spa: "Our most popular treatment this week has been fully booked since Monday — however, we have two slots remaining today."
None of this requires a technology overhaul. None of it requires a consultant, a rebrand or a capital budget. It requires a team in a room, a whiteboard, and a willingness to ask one question: where are we leaving social proof to chance when we could be designing it deliberately?
This research has been available since 2008. The towel card is still the same.
xoxo, Bored Hotelier 😉
Source and a great read: Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(3), 472–482. Link
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I use social proof to increase hotel revenue? A: Start with what you already know — your most ordered dish, most requested upgrade, most booked treatment. Frame those as social signals rather than sales pitches. A guest who hears "this is what most guests in your situation choose" makes a different decision than a guest who hears "would you like to upgrade."
Q: Why do hotel guests read reviews before booking? A: Research suggests guests aren't actually using reviews to make decisions — they're using them to validate decisions they've already made emotionally. By the time someone is reading your TripAdvisor page, they've usually already chosen you. They're looking for confirmation, not information.
Q: What are provincial norms in consumer psychology? A: Provincial norms are the behaviours of people who share your immediate situation or setting — as opposed to broader social groups. Cialdini's research found that people conform more strongly to provincial norms than to the norms of groups they personally identify with more, including gender and citizenship.