In the 21st century every choice we make is highly influenced by technology and the information presented to us online. The hospitality and travel industries have been completely revolutionized by the Internet. In the past nobody would travel to new locations without a paper guide. Nowadays everything is influenced by sites like Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and Yelp and rating and reviewing rates have become essential reading for every traveler.
For many hoteliers online reputation management is a novel and unknown territory. The changes in consumer behaviour however require new and effective marketing strategies in which online reputation management should be carefully considered.
Creating and managing profiles is crucial for your business
For the majority of customers, everything they know about your hotel before they book, they saw online. Having a strong profile with good reviews and good photos will help to guarantee you success, on the other hand one bad review can have a serious impact.
First and foremost comes the management of negative comments. It is important to keep a close eye on any negative comments; the sooner you find them and respond to them the better chance you have of keeping a good rating. Although it is not pleasant to receive negative comments, you have to work quick and there are a few positive things you can do to improve bad reviews. You need to show your customers that you care about their experience and you need to do it quick, otherwise your message will not have the same impact.
If they complain about the hygiene, request more information about the problem and ensure them you will look into it, if they were not pleased with your customer service try to investigate their complaints and improve the situation.
Prove your customers that you genuinely care about their feelings and you put effort to make your clients happy.
An additional important rule for developing your profile is having high quality photos of your property. According to research, customers tend to book hotels with listed photos a lot more than those without any images.
Ask customers for reviews
Another important step for improving your reputation is to encourage customers to leave reviews. There are several ways to request your clients to leave you a review. Why not focus on the personal touch? Explain to your customers how important reviews are for you, train your staff to communicate with the customers and make them feel connected to your property. If the clients get to know you and feel a personal relationship to your property then taking few seconds to leave a review will not seem like a burden to them. Empower your desk manager or concierge to request reviews politely, especially when they form a closer connection with the customers and know they have enjoyed their stay.
You can gather reviews by sending emails to your guests requesting a review of their stay or you can create a special page for collecting feedback and reviews on your website.
Travelers nowadays trust reviews more than the information you provide them on your website. For this reason focusing on gathering good reviews and dealing quickly and efficiently with the bad ones is crucial for your business.
Enhance your social media presence by sharing your best reviews and testimonials.
Needless to say your business is highly influenced by your social media presence. Apart from constantly uploading content and keeping up to date with the visual trends you should also make sure you re-post satisfied customers reviews. If your property constantly receives 5-star ratings and positive reviews on online review sites, show these off by re-posting them on social media. Share your best reviews on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Good hotel reputation management focuses on a word-of-mouth approach, this can be far more powerful than other promotional techniques.
Reach out to people yourself
In order to attract attention to your hotel reach out to social influencers. This is a simple way to build positive reputation for your property. Offer tours, cocktail evenings or meet ups for famous bloggers and influencers, they will fill your social media with user-generated photos and comments. This is a good advertisement technique that can help you reach a larger, already established, audience.
Hotel reputation management has evolved to become important element of your marketing and your competitive strategy. In fact, maintaining good reputation is one of the main struggles of most hotels. It takes a long time to build good reputation and only a few upset customers to bring it down. For this reason you need to learn how to manage your travel rating website profiles and at the same time operate your social media profiles efficiently. In addition you need to know how to respond quickly and appropriately to unsatisfied customers and to use every positive comment to your benefit.
