Expedia's hotel plan - review first, then checkout

Expedia Australia and New Zealand managing director Georg Ruebensal.

Fast-growing online travel company Expedia will offer its customers the chance to write reviews before they check out of accommodation.

Trip reviews are now done after guests leave a hotel, but the company says live reviews would be more valuable for customers and accommodation providers.

Expedia Australia and New Zealand managing director Georg Ruebensal said the move was aimed at giving hotels the chance to fix anything before the stay was over.

"From the experience we've had consumers often complain afterwards when hotels have no opportunity to take corrective actions," he said.

"The ideal is that there are no grounds for complaints in the first place but it happens."

The new review system is being tried in the United States and will be introduced in other countries, including New Zealand, within weeks.

Expedia has more than 1400 accommodation providers in New Zealand. Ruebensal said it had about 7.5 million verified reviews on its site, all of which were initially auto-screened for content and, if necessary, reviewed manually.

Reviewers had to have booked through the site and stayed in the accommodation to avoid the problem on other sites of bogus reviews.

Tourism Industry Association chief executive Chris Roberts said accommodation operators should welcome technology advances but the personal touch was always the best. He hoped guests with problems would contact hotel staff first rather than write a negative review.

Online reviews were double-edged - they either provided good publicity or provided the basis for improving service - but could be devastating for small businesses in particular.

Roberts said businesses had to carefully monitor reviews and where necessary respond.

United States-based Expedia last year gained approval for the A$703 million purchase of Australian-founded Wotif and last month was working with staff to restructure that business.

The deal needed approval from regulators on both sides of the Tasman and the Commerce Commission here said it was satisfied other metasearch sites such as TripAdvisor and Google Hotel would provide sufficient competition to the expanded Expedia.

Expedia also owns Hotels.com, Hotwire.com , as well as a corporate travel business platform, Egencia.com.

Expedia will report its third-quarter result this week, and analysts are forecasting a substantial lift in revenue because of strong bookings in the United States.