It is often observed that travelers before booking their stay visit online review websites to know the experience of guests who have stayed at a particular hotel. If there are positive reviews about a hotel then it encourages travelers to book rooms at that hotel. Whereas negative reviews will definitely hurt a hotel’s brand image and decrease their sales volume.
Therefore you must keep a watch over these reviews. You must them to your advantage to identify problems and find out ways to improve your guests’ experience.
Nowadays travelers post their reviews on popular review websites to share their guest experience. The guests refer to these online reviews before making a reservation in a hotel. These guests reply on these websites for booking decisions because the reviews come from real people.
Social media platforms are the commonplace for travelers to express themselves. They share their experience of their vacation by uploading photos of road trip, hotels they have stayed in and other happy moments. At times if they had a bad experience at a hotel they do let their family members and friends know about it. Thus these online posts are like recommendations that play an important role in building or destroying your hotel’s brand image.
The only way you can improve your hotel’s brand perception is by understanding what was your guests’ experience was like. The best way to know it is through reviews and feedback. You can follow these steps to encourage them for the same :
1. Guests appreciate it when you ask for their guest experience in-person. When your guests are checking out, it is a great time to interact with them and gently ask for their feedback. When you interact with your guests personally you come into direct communication with them. In this way, you show them that you do care about their perception which in turn makes them feel like an important person. Doing so can convert them into a happy returning customer.
2. You can also communicate with your previous guests via emails by requesting for feedback about their stay at your hotel. It is better to send a reminder to such guests within a few days after they check out. When you ask them for their feedback you not only show that you value them but also build a friendly relationship with them. You can also send then links to your preferred review websites and ask them to leave a positive feedback over there. Ask for testimonials as well so that you can display them on your website to create a positive impact on online travelers.
3. Who doesn’t like rewards? Exactly, everybody likes it!
So why not give a reward to guests who publish good reviews on review sites about your hotel. By giving promotional offers and discounts to such guests will encourage them to provide positive feedback about your hotel. In this way, your guests will become the brand ambassador of your hotel and will help you to promote your hotel to other potential future guests.
4. Learn from Negative reviews.
You can use negative reviews to learn about the issues faced by your guests. The issues may be related to your services or missing amenities or a bad behavior of your hotel staff. These negative reviews are like opportunities that help you to identify the problematic areas where you need to improve. You need to focus and find out the reason behind a bad review and try to find out right solutions to resolve them.
No matter what type of reviews you get, you can use them to measure your guests’ experience. Studying these feedback will help you improve your guest experience for future guests. If you do so then your guests will post positive online reviews about your hotel which will directly have a good impact on your hotel’s brand image.
Therefore it’s important for you to regularly monitor online reviews and humbly ask guests for their feedback to use them to your advantage.
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