Effective hotel reputation management is vital for attracting guests, increasing revenue, and building a positive brand image.
This article explores 12 actionable tips, including responding to all reviews, collecting more reviews, addressing guest concerns, and leveraging ORM tools.
Discover how to improve your hotel's online reputation and drive success continuously.
Hotel reputation management means actively monitoring and responding to guest reviews across various online platforms. This includes responding quickly and professionally to every guest, addressing negative comments immediately, and enhancing reputation online!
Hotels can attract more guests and increase revenue and success by smartly managing their online reputation.
Effective reputation management directly impacts the hotel's revenue and success. Nowadays, online users almost always rely on online reviews when finding ideal accommodations. In these scenarios, hotels must maintain their reputation.
One negative review can influence the user's decision, while positive reviews and ratings may greatly affect bringing more traffic and revenue to the hotel!
This blog will discuss 12 effective hotel reputation management tips every hotel should implement.
Yes, you heard it right! No matter if the review is positive or negative, ensure you respond to each one!
Responding to positive reviews demonstrates that you value your guests. It helps build a strong relationship with your guests. Always thank them for leaving a review.
This encourages guests to book again on your property! You highlight hotels’ amenities and services when you respond to reviews. So you are marketing your hotel at no extra costs!
Also, do not forget to respond to negative reviews. It shows the hotel’s commitment to guest satisfaction and gratification.
Never defend yourself, but offer solutions to your guests' issues during their stay. Be empathetic!
Tell your guests how you will rectify mistakes and improve their future stays, which will help increase the footfall at your hotel.
| More Reviews = Better Ranking = More Bookings |
You can rank on OTAs for the particular region if you have more reviews than other hotels in the same area. Ensure you collect more reviews on a daily basis.
Deploy different methods to collect more reviews and ratings from your guests. One of the most effective ways is to send them post-stay emails asking for feedback.
Thank them for choosing your hotel, and provide them with feedback links for quick reviews. Many hotels request feedback at the time of checkout at the front desk!
Incentives, offers, thank-you gifts, etc., are some effective ways to ensure the collection of future guest reviews.
It is important to understand your guest's issues. Know and work towards improving in those areas.
Although, your guests will not wait until you make those improvements. They are more likely to voice their concerns online. This may greatly tarnish your brand image.
To avoid this, communicate with your guests while they are on your property. Once they check out, they will put negative reviews online.
Communication is the most personalized experience you can offer to your guests. When hotel staff talks to guests about their experiences and feedback, they feel valued. You will improve your brand image and authenticity as well with such practices.
Talk to your guests, apologize to them in case of any inconvenience, and ensure that such scenarios will not happen again.
This way, you can save yourself from getting negative reviews online.
Hospitality is a competitive industry. When responding to reviews, you must act quickly. Negative reviews can occasionally be faked or written out of irritation. It's critical to act quickly in these circumstances. If not, you risk losing clients because of that erroneous review!
Some OTAs, like Expedia, rank hotels that respond quickly! Your rank on Expedia will be affected depending on the time you take to respond and the number of reviews you have responded to.
Decide a timeframe in which you want to respond to your reviews. You must respond in 24 to 48 hours, not more than that.
Quick review responses give you an edge by showcasing your responsiveness and willingness to engage with guests.
If your services and products don't meet guests' expectations, they will leave negative feedback. Improving these service qualities is the first step to building a good reputation.
Even if your hotel does not fall under a luxurious category, constantly check on these basic attributes that make any hotel ideal and improve continuously.
Having a response protocol in place for guest reviews is essential for effective hotel reputation management.
Having a response protocol is crucial when addressing reviews because it ensures consistency, professionalism, and customer satisfaction.
It allows businesses to handle positive feedback with gratitude, address negative comments promptly and effectively, and maintain a positive brand image.
A response protocol also ensures that all team members are aligned in their approach, preventing misunderstandings and maintaining a cohesive brand voice.
The tone of the response should be:
While responding on the OTA platforms, adhering to their writing guidelines is important. Suppose a hotel fails to do the same. In that case, they will face consequences such as removal of responses, temporary or permanent termination, bad impact on ranking and visibility, etc.
Suppose you continue to violate the platform’s guidelines. In that case, they may remove your responses, resulting in delayed reactions and hence a bad impact on ranking and visibility on that particular platform.
Here are the guidelines provided by a few OTA platforms.
Take negative reviews as a guide to improve in the areas you currently lack. Listen and understand your guest’s pain points and consider how to improve.
If the guest has only left a rating, contact them to know exactly where you went wrong. This shows your commitment to excellence and improvement.
Let your guests know that their feedback is considered and that necessary changes will be made for their future stays. This shows that their opinions are valued.
Focus on training your staff regularly. Set up a reward system for employees to encourage them to work harder and offer quality services.
Altogether, this will enhance the guest experience and hence the online reputation.
In today’s techno-savvy world, influencer marketing has a great scope. Audiences see and trust what they see online. Influencers usually share genuine experiences, which is why the audience relies on them to purchase.
Identify which influencer would be useful for your hotel and collaborate with them, keeping your budgets in mind.
Offer them free stays, offers, or other payment options to collaborate.
Remember to collaborate with influencers who genuinely align with your brand values and ensure their content is authentic and transparent.
By leveraging the reach and influence of trusted influencers, you can enhance your hotel's online reputation, increase brand awareness, and attract new customers.
Hotels may have listed themselves on various OTA platforms. Managing reputation across all these platforms is crucial but can become difficult.
In these cases, ORM tools come handy. With these, you can monitor your reviews across all OTAs on a centralized dashboard to get a comprehensive idea of how well you perform on these platforms.
ORM tools like KEEN help you professionally streamline and handle the reputation management process.
The most important feature of KEEN is it provides you with numerous reputation analytics reports, such as element analysis, review frequency, reviews breakdown based on various factors, channel summary, and so on.
These reports can help you set your goals, compare with the competitors, and set a benchmark for your performance.
Regularly analyze your performance and guest feedback. You can track your reputation management based on aspects such as:
Your work isn't done here. Online reputation management is an ongoing process, and it should be routine if you want to see effective results.
It requires constant monitoring, analysis, and improvement. Hotels should focus on all aspects, including enhanced guest experience, quality service and products, effective communication, and a smart online reputation management system.
All these departments go hand in hand; you cannot simply ignore any one of them. Fill the gaps in these processes as and when required. Train your employees, keep track of new trends, and improve continuously!
Effective hotel reputation management is crucial for the success of your hotel. It impacts your revenue, brand image, and guest satisfaction.
You can improve your online reputation by implementing the 12 tips discussed in this article, such as responding to all reviews, collecting more reviews, addressing guest concerns in real time, and enhancing the guest experience.
Having a response protocol, speeding up review responses, and leveraging ORM tools are also important. Remember, ORM is a continuous process that requires regular analysis, improvement, and adaptation to guest feedback.
By prioritizing online reputation management, you can attract more guests, increase bookings, and build a strong and positive reputation for your hotel.
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