The Definitive Guide to Reputation Management for Hotels

Hotel Reputation Management is a strategic set of processes designed to work with your marketing, advertising, customer service, and business development plans. Its purpose is to position your brand as an industry leader and a place customers want to visit. Your reputation is a key measure of performance that decreases uncertainty for customers, increases marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction, and grows your customer base. A good reputation means more to your business than just appearing to be successful and highly rated. It is one of the fundamental building blocks for success. Here are some of the major benefits of having a good hotel reputation:

• Higher Levels of Consumer Trust: Businesses with a good reputation are more trusted by people because they’re making their decisions based on the experiences of others. More people speaking positively about your brand encourages others to do the same.
• Increased Profits: Positive reviews, engagement, and interaction from guests will draw in more visitors and naturally increase the number of bookings to your hotel.
• Better Employee Talent: Having a glowing reputation and being seen as an incredible venue also attracts a higher quality of staff, who are motivated and committed because they are genuinely invested in the business’s success.
• Industry Authority: Building trust with your audience and having an outstanding reputation makes it easier for others to remember and recommend your brand. As they do so, your business becomes known for these values and this cultivates authority.
• Higher Levels of Brand Recognition: The more people see good things about your hotel, the more likely they will look at what you’re doing and share your content with their friends, family, and peers. This could be done digitally through social media, review sites, blogs, vlogs, etc. The end result is that people recognise your brand and associate it with what they’ve heard.

Potential customers researching hotels typically rely on recommendations from friends and family, social media, review sites, and Google searches. If your establishment has no reviews, it can negatively affect a customer’s opinion and discourage them from booking. People want to feel secure and confident when spending their money, and reviews offer insight into what others have experienced.

A lack of reviews can be especially damaging if your venue has been operating for some time. Visitors may assume that no reviews indicate mediocre or negative offerings. Factors such as how you appear online, the number of reviews, and their content directly influence the customer’s decision to book with you.

88% of travellers filter out hotels with an average rating below three, and 32% eliminate those below four.

How to Encourage Reviews

Here are some ways to encourage guests to write a review:

• Offer rewards or incentives: These could be in the form of discounts on future stays, free upgrades, or other perks in exchange for honest reviews.
• Request reviews on their website: This could be done through a pop-up or a message at the end of a guest’s stay.
• Generate reviews by email: Email guests after their stay, asking them to write a review. The email could include a link to the hotel’s review page to make it easier for guests to leave a review.
• Provide flyers, postcards, and QR codes linking to review sites: These could be placed in the guest room or handed out at check-out.

The Impact of Peer Reviews on Hotel Reputation Management

Peer reviews play a crucial role in the hospitality industry, as these reviews can influence a customer’s perception of a hotel or brand. Positive reviews increase customer trust and confidence, while negative reviews can turn potential customers away from the brand altogether. This can be particularly detrimental to franchises or chain locations where the brand’s reputation is a major draw.

First-time customers rely heavily on peer reviews to make informed decisions before spending their money. The Buyer Journey, which covers five stages, is affected by peer reviews, with reviews influencing not only the Sharing stage but also the Dreaming and Planning stages for both new and returning guests.

When customers are in the Dreaming stage, they will likely look at multiple locations and venues. However, if a hotel has a poor reputation or feedback rating, potential customers will likely dismiss the hotel as an option before moving on to the Planning stage with a competitor. During the Planning stage, reviews and user-generated content become extremely important, as they form the core of many people’s research and heavily influence their opinions.

According to a survey conducted by Trip Advisor, an average of nine reviews were read before a person made their booking decision for a hotel or restaurant.

81% of people frequently or always read reviews before booking a hotel.

Hotels must prioritise reputation management and actively engage with customers to address any issues or concerns to ensure positive reviews and maintain a strong reputation. By doing so, hotels can increase consumer trust, profits, industry authority, and brand recognition, and reduce negativity toward problems or scandals.

Your online reputation directly affects your sales volume. When you effectively manage your hotel reputation, you secure a competitive advantage; by failing to do so, you can suffer serious losses. When you disregard negative reviews and comments that appear on the first page of search engines, the loss in revenue can be significantly more than it would cost to put proper reputation management into place to begin with.

Measuring the impact of your reputation will help you:

• Determine what channels to use
• What channels and strategies are working for you
• Which areas need improvement
• Which areas are not working and need removing

It also gives you useful, usable information on your processes, situations, and the structure within your business. When applied correctly, this analytical data will help you improve, highlight, change, or market directly as appropriate.

To calculate your reputation investment, you need to look at:

• Customer Service Training
• Competitor Benchmarking
• Recording Metrics

When advertising your business or responding to comments on social channels, it’s essential that you conduct yourself to a set standard and always maintain your brand voice. Before you make any sort of post, you need to ask yourself:

• Does this information build our trust levels?
• Does it increase the number of people looking to us for advice?
• Does it provide value?

To measure your reputation here, you must look at the number of comments and queries you’ve received concerning your adverts and site traffic. Your online reputation management needs to mitigate risk and enable opportunity; it needs to work for you so that you’re capable of dealing with the positives and negatives.