What do you need to know about hotel reputation management?

Hospitality is one of the most competitive industries, thus, as a hotelier, it’s highly important to keep an eye on hotel reputation management. Your business reputation directly affects your position among competitors, and therefore, it affects your sales.

hotel reputation management

There are few industries where word of mouth is as influential as it is in hospitality.

 Let's see why this is so and how you can improve your position.

Online reputation management for hotels

 

Did you know that the online booking market takes up around 63% of all the profits gained in the travel industry? According to Statista, the overall revenue is $1.2 trillion, so yes, 63% means a lot of money. Moreover, the travel industry continues to be one of the fastest-growing industries, and with modern technology, it seems that online reputation has never been more important. 

 

The numbers support these claims:

 

  • 85% of people have the same trust in online reviews as in personal recommendations
  • 65% of people trust Google search results when looking for accommodation

 

Therefore, it’s extremely important what’s being said on the internet about your hotel. Hotel reputation management means understanding the guest’s impressions, while also making improvements where needed.

What does hotel reputation management consist of?

 

Online reputation will have a direct impact on your occupancy levels. That being said, it’s crucial to understand how the hospitality industry is affected by hotel reputation management and what it consists of. 

 

If done correctly, it can bring you many benefits in the long run. Therefore, there are 3 things to be considered when creating a reputation management strategy:

 

  1. Building a reputation - building a positive image means creating a strong brand that will attract more guests.
  2. Monitoring the reputation - your aim is to have a positive reputation, so you need to monitor what’s the overall guest sentiment in order to detect negative comments and act accordingly.
  3. Reputation repairing - once you detect the pain points, you should proceed with reputation repairing. Addressing negative feedback is usually appreciated and helps you to build a positive brand image.

 

How to track your hotel's reputation?

 

As we already mentioned, nowadays travelers are equipped with all kinds of technology that allows them to share their opinion at any time. While in other industries business owners have to focus only on one or two things, in the travel industry the whole experience is being evaluated. Thus, an online reputation can really make or break your business.

hotel reputation management

Reputation is built from both positive and negative reviews, so you need to keep track of everything, and do it on various platforms. 

 

Website 

 

You can’t build the house from the roof, can you? So, first, you need to make sure that your website is properly optimized. Guests want a user-friendly website where all the information is easily accessible and transparent. Make sure to explain what kind of accommodation you offer, what it consists of, what is the price, the location, and what are the available dates. Needless to say that all of this needs to be up to date, with supporting images.

 

Once your website is set, pay attention to the comments (in case the guests have the opportunity to leave a comment directly on the website). 

 

Online reviews and ratings

 

Besides leaving comments on your hotel’s website, guests usually visit other review platforms, such as Booking, Tripadvisor, Traveloka, etc. These reviews are extremely influential and you need to pay attention both to positive and negative ones. 

 

Social media

 

The third channel that highly affects your hotel's reputation management is social media. Social media is very influential when it comes to attracting new customers. It helps you generate more audience that can potentially become your guests. Social media heavily relies on images, so as we said above, make sure that future guests can see what their accommodation will look like. 

 

Let’s be honest - this already seems like a lot of work. But, no need to worry, we’ll explain to you how to easily keep track of your hotel's reputation management.

 

We’ll come to that part in a bit.

 

Benefits of having a positive online reputation

 

Growing a successful business is not easy at all. It takes a lot of time, effort, and resources to set your business on the right path. In a digital world, anyone can leave a review in a matter of minutes. If the review is a positive one, it can bring long-term benefits.

hotel reputation management

More visibility - all reviews, but especially positive ones, help businesses to make their brand more visible and attract new customers. An increase in traffic doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in the number of visitors, but it’s an indicator that the scope of your potential guests is getting bigger. 

 

More sales - if someone had a lovely stay, they will be more willing to recommend you. More positive feedback, therefore, means more sales. Almost all customers before deciding on the hotel, make their investigation online. Based on the reviews they stumble upon, they will decide whether to proceed with you or maybe some other competitor. 

 

Building credibility - hotel reputation management is extremely important for building credibility. More reviews, especially positive ones, show your business as trustworthy. Besides showing that you have numerous customers, having reviews also indicate that you value their opinion and make an effort to establish communication. 

 

Attracting new employees - reviews don’t always come just from guests. Current and former employees can share their two cents as well. Therefore, feedback that speaks about the company culture must be seriously taken into consideration. If your employees speak highly about you, that will facilitate finding new ones in the future. Everyone likes to work in a friendly, fair, and stimulating environment. 

 

How can you improve your hotel reputation management?

 

If you’re having great reviews, then you might think that there is no need for improvement. But, that’s far from the truth. Of course, that’s a positive sign, but you need to know what to do in case something unexpected happens. 

 

As we said, reviews can appear on numerous platforms, so it’s far from easy to keep track of all of them, especially manually. That’s why online aggregator tools have become so popular in recent years. These tools help you monitor and respond to reviews on various platforms - from your website, and social media, to any third-party review website. 

 

The automation of gathering and responding to reviews will help you greatly with hotel reputation management. Moreover, you’ll be able to provide timely responses, which is always a step in the right direction when dealing with an angry guest.

 

By keeping track of all the reviews you’ll be able to improve the customer experience. How? Well, you can spot what guests usually point out as a problem, so you can act on it. Also, you can get an idea for future improvements, or conduct surveys that will shed more light on the guests' overall experience.

 

Conclusion

 

In such a competitive industry where word-of-mouth gets transferred at lightning speed, building a hotel reputation management is a challenging task. Having a positive or a negative public image is in most cases deciding the hotel’s destiny in the long run. 

 

We hope that we managed to show you why hotel reputation management is so important and to offer you some advice on how to improve it even further. 

 

Do you have some interesting facts that you would like to share? We can’t wait to hear from you!

 

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