How Online Reviews Can Boost Your Hotel Business
A hotel’s reputation is very important. If the reputation is spoiled, the business can be tremendously impacted. Nowadays maintaining online reputation has become very very important. There are dozens of review sites and hundreds of business directories where people can leave reviews about any business, including hotels and restaurants.
These review sites can actually be good to boost your business. Your hotel can get enormous exposure if you can manage to get lot of good customer reviews on popular business directories like Yelp, Google Business, BBB and other places.
However there are both pros and cons to most things, so is the same with these review sites. As positive reviews can boost your business so can negative reviews spoil it. So you need to be careful. Let us discuss some tips and strategies on how to maximize the benefits of online review sites.
1. Monitor constantly – There are a few popular review sites which you need to constantly monitor. You could keep an employee dedicated just for that task of monitoring and replying to online customer feedback. Managing online reputation is very important and you should not neglect it.
These are the top most review sites which you should compulsorily monitor without fail – Google My Business, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Yelp.
2. Always reply to users – Whenever some user leaves any review or feedback on any of the above mentioned sites you should try to respond to it. When you respond and reply to comments, other users would see it that your hotel is active and it cares for its customers. This will leave a good impression upon the users about your hotel.
Whenever someone leaves a positive review, thank the user for it. Tell them you enjoyed reading about their pleasant experience and hope they will choose your hotel again in the future and give you further chance to serve them.
When someone leaves a negative review, respond to it as well. Again thank the user for providing valuable feedback. Tell the user you are sorry they were not happy with something. Acknowledge their concerns and issues, give them an assurance that you will look into their complaint and would take whatever remedial action is required. This way you can gain the confidence of the users. Never blame or argue with the users. Even if they are rude in their comments and replies, you need to be calm and professional.
At the same time, consider the negative feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve. Check if the complaint is genuine and if you could do something to improve your service and avoid similar problem in future.
3. Encourage guests to leave feedback – When someone stays at your hotel and you feel they had a good, pleasant stay don’t feel shy to ask them to leave a review about your place on any one of the above mentioned review sites. Tell them you would appreciate if they could take 2 minutes to write something about your hotel. Inform them that it will be beneficial for your hotel if the guest can share feedback.
Conclusion:
Online reputation management is becoming increasingly important for almost any business but more so in the hospitality sector. Recent surveys suggest that almost 95% people will read at least 5-7 reviews before they finalize any hotel booking. So make sure you follow the above mentioned tips and strategies to maximize the benefits gained from these review portals while minimizing their negative impact on your business.