In last week’s webinar held exclusively for ReviewPro clients, we tackled the main concerns about how to manage online reputation for hotels, whether an independent hotel, hotel group or a brand, in order to achieve the best results with the ReviewPro tool.
Neil James gave us some advice, tips and a sneak peek on our new Step By Step Guide to Managing Your Hotel’s Online Reputation released for our Clients.
Here are Neil’s answers to the questions submitted by attendees.
Q: If a guest sends me a negative review and also posts it in TripAdvisor? where should I respond? both or just TripAdvisor? – Aejnadra V.
If a guest has sent you a negative review privately, or via an internal survey, as well as posting the same review on TripAdvisor, my recommendation would be to respond to both. Initially, if you have the opportunity to identify the customer from the direct review, direct communication with that customer via telephone or email is always the best option in order to be able to find out the real detail behind the review. Once this is done and you have been able to respond to the customer directly, a response on TripAdvisor confirming your discussion and actions taken would demonstrate to potential travellers the importance you have given the review and the action you have taken.
Q: I saw in your example about a good response that the manager gave a personal experience, would it be appropriate to do so in all occasions? I generally try to be neutral… would it be best to react in a more personal manner? – Lieven De M.
In my experience it is always good to try and deal with the customer on a personal basis, especially when responding to positive reviews. Guests who give a positive account for their experience at your hotel are usually emotionally attached to their experience and stay with you, and therefore being able to connect with them on a personal level continues that great experience. If the review is however more negative than positive, then a professional response rather than a personal response would be more appropriate. The language and tone used should also be relevant to your product, brand and positioning.
Q: Can ReviewPro also provide us with contact details of the reviewer in order to speed up reaction time? – Lieven De M.
When ReviewPro retrieves reviews from the various sites, we pull all information which is publically available. Therefore, we only have the ability to provide details of guests in the instance where the guest has provided the details. Many times this could also be just the first name or last name. As a policy to help with this matter, I would recommend to always capture the email address of your customers either upon checking or, I have also seen hotels that mandate an email address in order for guests to connect to the wifi while providing their room number. This is also a very good method.
Q: How can we answer our guests’ comments efficiently?
There are a number of ways in order to respond to guests’ comments efficiently and each review will require a separate approach to the response. Some key tips to have in mind when responding are:
- Before responding to reviews, investigate the issue to ensure that you can provide relevant feedback to your guests
- It is vital to remember that the most efficient response to a guests review is to respond internally through action. Ensure that you investigate the comments that your guests are providing using ReviewPro’s Semantic Analysis. The Semantic Analysis is the best tool to find the trends that your customers are talking about across various concepts in your hotel.
- Ensure that the person responding has a management title and that they sign the review with name and position. This is key in order for the reviewer and potential travellers to feel like they have been heard.
- More tips on responding to reviews can be found in one of our previous webinars ‘How to Respond to Reviews’,the details of this can be found on the ReviewPro Learning and Support Center – which is available exclusively to ReviewPro clients.
Q: How to remove or hide negative comments? – Silvia B.
When your clients are posting comments on the various review sites, they are posting them in order to share their experiences with other travelers. It is actually not possible to remove negative review comments from review sites, unless you have a real business case to demonstrate that the review is false, and in many cases even then you are likely to find it difficult to get the OTA or review site to remove the comment.
The correct and most efficient way to deal with negative reviews is to take the feedback and act upon that feedback internally within your hotel. Once that action is done, you can then provide a response to the customer, and the thousands of potential customers that could also be reading the comment and deciding whether or not to stay at your hotel. See the below graphic that was shared during the webinar:
Q: How is the GRI calculated? – Jikku J.
- All review sites require the consumer to give a general evaluation of their experience. This quantitative assessment is normally based on a rating between 0-5 or 0-10, but varies by review site.
- The Global Review Index™ (GRI) is calculated on a daily basis for each hotel by analyzing the quantitative scores associated with reviews posted
- The Global Review Index™ for a specific date range is the average of the daily Global Review Index™ scores that have been calculated during that date range
- Calculated with a proprietary algorithm developed by ReviewPro in conjunction with input from industry experts and advisors from leading graduate programs in hospitality management
What it is not?
It is not an average of all review scores
What is it used for?
- To benchmark a given hotel, group of hotels or chain, make comparisons between properties, compare results with their competitors and track the evolution of a hotels performance over time
- ReviewPro clients also use the Global Review Index™ to set quality objectives as well as optimize online pricing and distribution strategies
Q: Is it a good idea to let individual departments answer to specific questions? – Nicholas R
It is always good to have variety in the responses to your guests’ comments, but it is also important that the response is well structured. If a review is commenting on one specific department, having the Manager of that department respond is a good approach as long as they have good literacy skills and are responsible for the department.
In case a review mentions multiple departments, it is usually good to discuss the review in the daily operations meeting in order to get feedback from the various department heads in order to be able to structure your response to the guest.
A group of hotels in London actually has the Duty Manager of the day responding to reviews on a daily basis. This ensures that the responses sound varied and not repeated, and a different style of writing is used for each response.
Q: How do you go about increasing the number of online reviews your company gets? – Alison F.
Prior to concentrating on generating more online reviews, it is key to ensure that you have a good GRI in comparison to your competition set. Also, ensure that you don’t have a product or service issue that keeps coming up in reviews and is likely to keep occurring if you generate more and more reviews. Once this is ensured, there are various options to help with generating Reviews:
- The best generator of reviews is excellent customer service.
- Send a post-stay email to your customers, inviting them to write a review on the review site of your choice
- Consider leaving cards (business card size) in bedrooms, prompting customers to write a review
- Try using QR codes in order to generate more reviews.
- Engage customers through Social Media sites when they check in or comment on your hotel, create a policy to interact with them and thank them for sharing their experience
For more information on how to generate reviews, please consult the webinar “Spreading the Love: How to Generate More Reviews, Followers and Engagement on Social Networks”
- Slides–> Spreading the Love: How to Generate More Reviews, Followers and Engagement on Social Networks
- Video–> Spreading the Love: How to Generate More Reviews, Followers and Engagement on Social Networks
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