What does reputation management involve, and why are guest reviews important? What strategies should be employed to maintain and enhance your good reputation?
Reputation reflects the recognition and respect a hotel or restaurant earns based on guest opinions about its services, while reputation management involves the continuous monitoring and improvement of this image. In our article, we introduce strategies that can enhance and strengthen the reputation.
What is the Role of Reputation for a Hotel?
Reputation is crucial for a hotel or any hospitality business, as guests are more likely to choose providers they trust. Guest reviews are also important for Google and other search engines, as they contribute to the functioning of their algorithms. Regular feedback and communication with both satisfied and occasionally dissatisfied guests through the Google Business Profile can further enhance credibility, attracting more potential customers and guests.
Beyond increasing the guest base, a positive reputation can also lead to greater guest loyalty, with guests becoming repeat visitors. This can have a beneficial impact on revenue by increasing profitability and making the business more attractive to talented and loyal employees, thereby reducing hiring and turnover costs.
What is Reputation Management?
Reputation management involves tracking, managing, and responding to guest feedback on various review and social media platforms, including Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Facebook, Instagram, and Google. This includes:
- Responding to reviews,
- Monitoring discussions about the business,
- Addressing threats to the reputation,
- Proactively seizing opportunities to enhance the reputation.
Negative feedback should not be feared, as it can highlight areas needing improvement, but it is essential to know how to handle them.
Tips for Successful Reputation Management
From our experience, managing guest reviews is often considered as a necessary but unpleasant task. Due to a lack of resources, many rarely have enough time to respond to comments, and even less often know how to deal with negative reviews. However, a good reputation doesn’t depend on the flawless operation of the establishment at all times. It’s worth understanding the basics of reputation management because with the right techniques, negative reviews can be turned into opportunities. The following tips can help with this.
- Respond to All Reviews
It’s easy to respond to positive reviews, but it’s just as important to address negative ones. This can reinforce the trust of both potential and previous guests, as they want to know how the issue was addressed and if steps were taken to prevent similar problems in the future. There’s no need to make excuses, just listen to what the guest has to say: let them know their opinion matters, that the issue is being handled, and that steps will be taken to prevent it from happening again.
- Use Social Media
Social media is an excellent tool for reputation management, as it provides an opportunity to connect with our community. We can monitor what people are saying about the services and, when necessary, join the conversations. In critical situations, with the right crisis management strategy, we can avoid amplified negative backlash.
- Conduct Satisfaction Surveys
Satisfaction surveys are useful tools for encouraging guests to leave reviews, especially if they are satisfied with their stay, which can also increase guest loyalty. It’s advisable to do this during checkout, or to send a follow-up email asking for an online review shortly after their stay. At this point, the experience is still fresh, and if it was positive, they are more likely to share it. A few days or a week later, the willingness to leave a review significantly decreases.
- Always Be Polite
Handling negative reviews is not an easy task, as they often become personal. However, it is important to remain calm and respond politely, even if we disagree with the reviewer. A calm, thoughtful response can leave a positive impression on other guests and strengthen trust in the establishment.
- Utilise Software Assistance
The multitude of platforms and the increasing number of reviewers make reputation management a significant challenge. From our experience, about a quarter of guests leave reviews, which they often post on multiple platforms. Consider a busy 50-room hotel; this could mean hundreds of reviews within a week. Responding to all reviews is only part of the task; it is much more important to extract and apply the lessons learned from them in practice. This requires a thorough review of all feedback and high-quality reports and analyses.
Therefore, it’s worth considering investing in software that simplifies the reputation management process and minimises the risks of incomplete analysis. One such tool is Everguest Intelligence, which not only facilitates responding to comments from major platforms but also provides AI-generated text summaries in its reporting module, offering great assistance in identifying areas for improvement and developing improvement plans.
If you’re curious about how Everguest Intelligence can help grow your business and enhance your reputation management, contact us!
