If you’ve been around the industry for any amount of time, we have no doubt that you understand the value of a good review rating.
Once upon a time, the evidence of quality and what to expect from a property listing came from the entrenched star-rating system. Essentially, the more stars you had, the more likely people were going to book your hotel because it gave them an indication of what to expect and make ‘value for money’ judgements.
Guest ratings from platforms such as TripAdvisor, Google and Facebook puts the power back into the consumer’s hands when it comes to how well your hotel performs. Potential bookers can read real experience reviews from previous guests to ultimately help them decide if they want to stay there too.
So, if you want to try to close some of your social proof gaps and have the best ranking possible, you need to start considering factors such as:
Reviews are one of the ranking factors on many of the platforms, especially TripAdvisor. So, you need to keep up the pace of your reviews to ensure that your property is ranked well. In addition, having regular reviews is a key consideration for reducing social proof leakages.
Of course, the reviews aren’t always going to be great – you’re always likely to get a bad review or two. But it’s important to keep up your response rate. More often than not, hotels we come across completely drop the ball on responding to their reviews.
The reason why it’s so important to respond to reviews is that these reviews not only improve your hotel ranking but also act as a free advertisement to your next possible guest. So, even bad reviews can be okay because they allow you to highlight that you’re remedying whatever the complaint was – you can always turn a bad review around.
Unfortunately, social proof leakage is here to stay for the foreseeable future. However, there is a pretty simple formula when it comes to bridging the gap with your reviews: please the guest, ask them to tell the world about their experience, and when they do, remember to thank them (publicly) for their review.
The more reviews you have, the more recent they are and the higher the ratings, the better your chances of securing your next booking. If you get a bad review, ensure that you still respond and remember that your response is an advertisement for your next guest.
