Leveraging online reputation management for better ROI

You can generate extra revenue for your hotel by focussing on reputation management channels such as Trip Advisor. This can be fast and can also be done without hiring a professional Agency. You may do many things to promote your hotel, website, ads, but reputation management is missing from the plan. This will have a great impact on your revenue. Some simple tips that will give you a head start in this direction.

Always reply to customer reviews: Reviews can be good or bad. It’s important you reply, reply on time, politely and with a Semi explanation. Reply with a piece of Advice and subtle marketing language. This actually enables readers to stay with you. Remember hard selling is not allowed by these platforms. Better way is to go around by saying something on the lines as “thanks for visiting; we are glad you enjoyed your stay. We are also having an event next Thursday at our pool side. Please drop in if you find time and enjoy some great music and sea food by the pool side.” Not only would this attract people to re-visit but also those customers who are planning to visit. This will aid decision making in your favour. Management responses therefore are great marketing tools.

Never do a fake review to rank higher: Many companies who do this.. But remember you can’t fool your customers for too long eventually it will show up. It is reputation management at the end of the day and not reviews management. Earn your reputation by actually spending those efforts in delivering quality services. It actually leads you to garner a more loyal customer base in the long run.

Request your guests to review: Maintain the record of your guests in excel sheet and the sources they came from.Email your guests and request them to write reviews for you on various channels. You can also ask them while they check out. Even if you get 5 good positive reviews every month on various popular reputation management channels like trip advisor, it’s a great number. These are genuine and honest reviews from your customers. Eventually you see this number growing and as you get more and more positive reviews you see the revenue will also increase.

Call your guests and get their feedback:You can pick up the phone as a GM or an owner and ask your customers a genuine and honest feedback. It will help you not only earn reviews but also earn a customer who may come back to you for a lifetime.

More pictures on Reputation Management channels online will help you rank higher: The question is how do you get them? Many times you actually see customers walking out with cameras and camera phones. You see them clicking pictures in your hotels. Just walk up to them and say we see you clicking some really nice pictures or videos in our hotel can we request them to post them online. More pictures and videos will actually attract more customers.

You can’t always rely on ranking No.1 on the popularity index at Trip Advisor: The “Just for you” feature enables users to see customized feeds basis its previous usage patterns. The trip Advisor is now working on the data that has been collected from previous customer visits, including what sort of hotels they like, what sort of rooms they like etc. So the no. 1 hotel on the popularity index may not be the no. 1 recommendation for A particular customer instead basis his usage pattern he may see a hotel ranked 23 as no.1 recommendation for him from trip Advisor. So there are a lot more elements that can get you the right traction.

While Trip Advisor remains a dominant player for reviews in the market with millions of unique views every day, it’s important that you do not ignore other popular or local channels for reputation management such as expedia, booking.com, Trivago, IgoUgo etc.The customer today visits various sites before finally arriving at a decision.

Authored by AvijitArya, CEO, Internet Moguls