It has become a standard in the hotel industry to respond within 48 to 72 hours to the reviews as soon as they are received. The speed of response does matter and has a great impact on customers. For that reason, It becomes necessary for hoteliers to have strategies up their sleeves to respond to reviews successfully.
In order to respond quickly, you have to enable the notifications for reviews whenever they are posted. The review websites and OTAs like Expedia, TripAdvisor etc. have the options to send alerts for reviews.
It may be difficult to keep the pace up to monitor reviews from several websites altogether. So you can opt for a reputation management system that will help you to manage and respond to reviews with a single dashboard.
Put in your best efforts to listen to the guests whether its a positive or negative review on the website. They may be complementing or complaining to you in person as well. Then read or listen to their thoughts, be empathetic and respond in a professional manner.
You must search for comments and hashtags on social media related to your hotel name. You can also set up Google alerts for your property name. This will you to quickly notice and aid to the customer demand or complaints.
By making plans for executing the response for reviews comes in very handy. You can team up with your staff and create an action plan on how to search, evaluate and when to respond to the reviews and complaints of your guests.
Personalized responses are a thousand times better than the same robotic replies given by many hotels. If you address any issue of the customer on a review website, then a personalized message is bound to please that customer. Not only will you set a brilliant standard for yourself but also set yourself apart from other hotels.
Hotels mostly prefer the response deadlines to be within 24, some go for 48 and others take up to 72 hours. But the actual fact is the quicker the response you put up the better impacts on the current and future guests. So it is a best to get down to writing a great response and posting it as soon as possible to show how actively your hotel brand takes care of the matter.