Hospitality Reputation Management

Hospitality reputation management is the method of building, maintaining, tracking, and analyzing the online reputation of your brand in various locations. It is necessary for hotels and restaurants in the hospitality industry to clean their online reputation, just like cleaning the hotel lobby and rooms. Today, we’ll discuss hospitality reputation management; strategies, and best practices for online reputation management of hotels and restaurants.

Statistics for Significance of Hotel Reputation

• 80% of the trip advisors study roundabout 12 reviews before selecting the hotels and restaurants
• Reviews and rating influence their decision-making power and willingness to pay
• Hotels and restaurants increase their prices by 11.2% while building and maintaining the occupancy level
• 79% of the tourists would choose the hotel with a higher rating

Strategies for Hospitality Reputation Management

Let’s discuss the main strategies and best practices for hospitality reputation management; they’re as follows;

Automated Feedback Surveys

It is necessary to send a kind and gentle reminder to all the guests for their feedback, and they would love to share their feedback and reviews once you invite them. The simplest and easiest method is to send them a request for a feedback survey, and it is not a direct request for review.

Before formally asking them for the review, it is necessary to send them a feedback survey to know their experience with the hotel. The survey lets the hotel know about the customer satisfaction level; happy and dissatisfied; it provides the hotel an opportunity to fix their issue before leaving a negative review online. It allows the company to recognize the negative reviews before they could jeopardize the company’s reputation.

Responding to Reviews

Effectively responding to the reviews of customers is as important as requesting them for feedback. According to an estimate by TripAdvisor, approximately 85% of the customers create a good impression of the hotel after reading the positive response of the hotel. It shows that the company cares about the responses and reviews of customers and guests and how they handle the potential negative situation.

Usually, the loudest and the most negative comments and reviews get the most attention. You shouldn’t allow the negative comment to distract you from a vast majority of positive and appreciating comments. It is significant to acknowledge and celebrate the win with a vast majority of positive reviews and comments.

Use Templates

You should have ready-made templates for various types of positive and negative comments. While responding to the reviews and comments, don’t just copy and paste, add a little detail to adjust to the current situation and scenario. It makes your response authentic genuine relevant to the reviews of customers.

Follow Consistent Tone

It is necessary to have the same and consistent tone while responding to the reviews and comments of guests and visitors. In order to maintain a consistent tone for a response, you should only let a limited number of people respond to the reviews and comments. You should provide them with sufficient training to effectively respond and leave a positive impression on customers.

Automated Technological Tools

You should consider investing in automated technological tools, software, and applications. They save a lot of your time by automatically sending reminder surveys to the customers and responding to their reviews and comments. Timely responsiveness would increase the search ranking of the platforms.

By automating various processes, they would have time to focus on improving the customer satisfaction level and promoting brand loyalty. Some of the main automated technological processes to help and assist the company are as follows;

• Comparison and benchmarking with competitors
• Collecting valuable data and information from customers
• Sending reminder emails for survey feedback
• Adding notes to the hotel database profiles of every guest
• Sharing mid-stay emails

Don’t Blame & Become Defensive

While responding to the reviews and comments of customers, you should remain calm and don’t follow a defensive tone. It is because the defensive and negative tone of response would seem inappropriate and nonprofessional. You should consider responding to all the reviews once a week, and don’t let the temporary feeling jeopardize your years of experience.

Develop a Review Page

You should create a dedicated review page on your hotel website and send a link to all the visitors and guests to share their feedback, reviews, comments, and experiences. The reviews of previous guest experiences matter a lot to new customers. It provides a key insight to the hotel to improve its quality service, accommodation, and experience.

Notification for New Review

The reputation of the hotel is highly reliant on time and efficiently responding to the new reviews and comments of customers. They should turn on the notification alert message for any type of new comment and review from customers. The notification alert allows them to be aware of all the reviews and resolve them on time.

Conclusion: Hospitality Online Reputation Management | Reputation Management for Hotels & Restaurants

After an in-depth study of hospitality reputation management; we have realized that online reputation is highly significant to businesses and companies. If you are learning about the online reputation of hotels and restaurants; then you should keep in mind the abovementioned strategies and best practices to build and maintain the reputation of the hotels and restaurants in the hospitality industry.