We all know that people prefer to learn from the experience of others, it promotes a new level of trust that hotels / lodges themselves can't - reviews are importation for lead generation and branding. Sharing a review is an excellent way of getting a testimonial out to the public, but there are some do's and don’ts to it.
Don’t spend all your time grafting the hard work to get in those reviews. A marketing campaign to reign in the reviews takes a lot of hard work. Making sure you respond to negative reviews, keeping up with changes in site policies and ensure you're pushing reviews in a legal manner so to speak.
Before covering reviews make sure your in-house team is positive their product & service in each department is on point. Honestly, no review at all is better than a positive review, unfortunately it is reality that people are more likely to place negative reviews than positive, it is human nature. So before encouraging reviews make sure internally they'll lead to positive lead generation & branding.
If you're in the business you're likely to be on more than one review site, give customers the option on where to review. SEO is the name of the game, the more places your property is name the more likely you'll be seen. Generally, a lot of people are only on certain platforms, giving them the option to use what they know encourages ease of review. Some people are super stars on Trip Advisor, other on Google My Business - really it depends where they're from and what they're comfortable with. Alongside this giving them clear reviews on "how to post" reviews is just as important - remember not everyone is confident online - the easier the process the better.
Review sites have policies which need to be adhered to! We're sure you have thought a million times about how to get reviews, 9/10 if it is easy its probably against policy. Authenticity is a major issue for review sites due to fake reviews.
It all comes down to common sense. Getting reviews is a massive advantage - people listen to people but how aggressively do you pursue reviews? Restaurants, lodges, hotels – it’s likely that most customers will make their decisions on reviews - but ten five star reviews are better than thirty two star reviews - quality beats quantity always.
Do you need some fresh ideas developing a strategy? Get hold of us, we'll help you think out of the box!
