- May 19, 2024
- Business, Hotel Marketing, Revenue management
Best Ways to Get Your Customers to Write Reviews
Reviews and ratings determine a business’s survival in the digital age. Lesser stars on directories like TripAdvisor, and Google Business can have a greater impact than thousands of dollars spent on sponsored advertising. Positive evaluations, particularly in the hotel industry, can stimulate demand and present a chance to modify prices and boost profits. It can be difficult, though, to encourage visitors to leave those reviews. It seems sense to offer visitors several opportunities to provide feedback on their stay, but there needs to be a careful balance between being helpful and annoying. As an astute hotelier, your objective is to persuade customers to write glowing reviews on every occasion in order to increase your customer base, raise your star rating, and influence future travelers.
What is a customer review?
Guests publish evaluations for other people to read regarding the goods and services provided by a firm. Before making a purchase through booking ai, many customers investigate companies and read these evaluations to find out more about them. Customers may easily evaluate a ranking system from many web reviews before selecting which company best suits their requirements. A potential consumer may be more comfortable making a purchase from your organization if they see a lot of favorable reviews that score highly for your company or its goods.
Why are customer reviews important for hotels?
- It helps in the hotels to understand the customers in a better way
- It helps in improving the standard of customer service
- Reviews help the hotels to generate more reviews
- It gives credibility and social proof
- Reviews do marketing for the hotels
- It allow guests to have a voice and create customer loyalty
- It improves rankings
Best Ways to Get Your Customers to Write Reviews
Set the Right Expectations
Before the guest ever checks in, everything should be done correctly. Make sure the content and images on OTAs accurately depict the experience at your establishment, and refrain from creating unrealistic expectations in your marketing and advertising materials. Guests that are pleasantly delighted by what they receive tend to leave favorable reviews in their majority.
Create remarkable experiences
Make it a memorable experience that people will discuss. Interpret “remarkable” with great literal meaning—”worth remarking about.” Does the experience you provide for guests match that? Examine reviews left by prior visitors regarding their experiences at your establishment and address any issues that they bring up.
Have a plan
Without having a plan of action in place, nothing can be done successfully. Establish a strategy and stick to it for how you will reply to reviews. You’ll inspire more guests’ trust the more they witness you responding to their feedback. Be ready since dealing with a negative review will unavoidably come up at some point. Seek advice on how to address reviews that are not favorable.
Prepare your staff
Being your hotel’s ambassadors, make sure your staff is informed at all times. As customers provide positive feedback during their stay, remind your staff to ask them to review the experience on TripAdvisor or Google. It might just take a gentle reminder, so make sure they are not being aggressive about it. Since first impressions matter and a seamless check-in and check-out process will enhance the entire experience, make every effort to ensure that it runs as smoothly as possible. You should make sure that your employees understand this for hotel reviews best. To provide your customers the greatest experience possible, learn effective staff management techniques.
Don’t be afraid to ask
Requesting anything can be difficult, but one of the simplest ways to get something done is to ask for a review. Upon checking out, make sure to let them know your online address and invite them to share their experience with you. In the aftermath, you can also get in touch with them to ask them to complete a survey regarding their degree of satisfaction, urge them to share their experience online, and possibly even give them a discount in exchange.
Rewarding Customers
Make certain that your visitors are aware of your appreciation for their work. Have a giveaway if you notice improvements in your reviews. Consider giving away a complimentary weekend stay at your hotel to a reviewer chosen at random. If you decide to hold another free giveaway, this will encourage reviewers to keep going.
Make it easy
When there are too many steps involved in leaving a review, there’s nothing more annoying than that feeling. Ensure the feedback procedure is simple, fast, and does not restrict guests to answering questions with only one alternative, regardless of where they choose to submit it. Once you get their consent, post their comments on your various platforms. Obviously, you want people to post on Google and reviews of Tripadvisor as well. However, you can utilize your own surveying procedures to get testimonies from them that you can use to promote your hotel on your website and social media. You can also use the previously mentioned advice to encourage reviews on other websites.
Post guest testimonials online
It makes for excellent content for your newsletter, social media accounts, and online guest communications when you share the wonderful experiences of other visitors. On your website, you can utilize testimonials to entice visitors to make reservations. Incentives should be offered to visitors who post photos and stories about their experiences on your social media pages.
What to Do After You Have Asked Them?
The main goal of inviting guests to submit a review should be to gather insightful feedback, even while reviews are crucial for your rankings and reputation. You can enhance procedures, offerings, and products, as well as gain a deeper comprehension of your USPs, by utilizing the input that your visitors provide. It is more probable that customers will continue to write reviews if they perceive your business to be one that truly values their opinions, pays attention to their suggestions for development, and is guest-centric. Ultimately, soliciting more reviews from past visitors is critical to the growth and success of your company, as it provides you with the input you need to know if you are fulfilling the demands and expectations of your customer base.
