Everything you need to know about online reviews

Avoid negative reviews

Have you ever felt your client’s displeasure during their stay? If you let a client leave your hotel on a bad note, you give them the opportunity to pour their heart out online, which certainly cannot have a beneficial impact on your hotel’s image. The best way to avoid negative reviews is to detect unhappy clients during their stay and immediately act in order to change their mind. Human contact can significantly help to boost your clients’ satisfaction. You therefore need to keep this human contact throughout your client’s stay: not only upon their arrival but also whenever they interact with your staff, whether it be with the housekeeping or the restaurant staff. Each interaction your client has should improve their overall satisfaction. It is crucial to motivate your staff to be proactive. Whenever a client points out a problem, discuss it with them while being open-minded and try to find an optimal solution. This could potentially save any situation and may even result in the client posting a positive review, if the situation was handled correctly and the issue was resolved.

Obviously, not every single client will leave your hotel on cloud nine. However you should have a rough idea of how satisfied each one of your client is when they leave your hotel, and be certain that you had tried everything within your power to resolve any discontent they may have had before they check out. You can also try and mitigate discontent after their stay in order to avoid negative reviews online. While thanking your client for staying with you, you can encourage them to write to you directly in order to communicate any comments or remarks they may have, and to fill out a satisfaction survey. Thus, they will be able to communicate with you their feelings and feedback without hurting your hotel’s image. Additionally, you will gain insight as to why they are not fully satisfied, and you will be able to lead some remedial actions to boost your future clients’ satisfaction.

Increase positive reviews

We wish to avoid for negative reviews to be available publicly, but that is the opposite for positive reviews. There are multiples ways to encourage satisfied clients to post positive reviews online. Therefore, if a client shares positive comments with you by e-mail or over the phone, remind them that they have the opportunity to share these online, via social media or OTAs. Also, if you can spot a satisfied client about to check out, you should ask them in person to post an online review. It has been proved that 70% of people asked to leave a review online end up doing so, so take advantage of that! You can also share positive reviews on your website or through various communications in order to build your standing and boost your bookings.

Answer all reviews

Whether you want it or not, you will certainly receive good and bad reviews. However you must answer every single one of them. You should of course thank those who left positive reviews, but it is even more important that you answer negative reviews. This allows you to start the conversation and show your unhappy client and potential clients who will browse through these reviews that you care about your clientele and that you wish to provide the best possible service. You will hence avoid or at least mitigate the effect of negative reviews on your hotel’s image.

In order to answer negative reviews appropriately, make sure to be calm, polite and understanding. It is important for you to answer quickly to avoid many potential clients seeing negative reviews unanswered. Do not be defensive, apologize for the inconvenience your client experienced and describe which remedial actions you will undertake to make sure this issue never happens again. This will let the client who left this negative review know that you care and take into consideration their feedback. The other potential clients who will browse through these reviews will be reassured to know real and remedial actions will have been taken as a result of these negative comments. You should also thank the client for their comment and feedback, and ask them to contact you directly by e-mail so that you can then offer them a compensation.

You now know everything about online reviews. All you need to do is to carry out the advice given above to avoid negative reviews, get more positive reviews and answer all reviews appropriately.