We asked respondents of Coyle’s Global Spa Survey how trustworthy they found various methods of ‘social networking’.
As indicated in the table above, Friends/Family word of mouth got the most positive response with 91% classifying it as trustworthy or extremely trustworthy. Co-workers’ word of mouth was second with 71%. Spa websites were next with 57% citing them as trustworthy or extremely trustworthy. Feedback sites and Spa Magazines were cited as trustworthy or extremely trustworthy only 44% and 41% of the time respectively. The least trustworthy method was blogs with 10% citing them as somewhat untrustworthy or not trustworthy.
Perhaps it is the apparent emphasis or the lack of structure, but ‘word of mouth’ from strangers seems to be significantly less important than a personal recommendation, regardless of the method of distribution.
Physicians were noted as being trustworthy or extremely trustworthy 31% of the time but 47% of respondents indicated that they did not obtain spa recommendations from this source. Also interesting was that 25% of respondents stated that professional organizations were trustworthy or extremely trustworthy, yet only 50% of respondents actually use such organizations for recommendations.
