In today’s age of World Wide Web, it is essential for every business to opt for online reputation management. This is because businesses are relying on the reviews of consumers more and more as they grow.
This is especially the case with the hospitality and travel businesses which rely on positive customer relationships to drive social media marketing and word-of-mouth.
As the experiences of guests count much, the business owners must find a way to counteract or remove the otherwise negative reviews on popular review sites like Expedia and TripAdvisor.
Why Should You Worry about Negative Reviews?
The sites of reviews are essential portions of the experience of travel booking. Over 90% of the travellers look out for reviews prior to making a booking. It’s also a general tendency that a lot of clients would not book a hotel if it does not have reviews online.
TripAdvisor achieves around 400 million visitors every month and over 125 million visitors use Expedia. These numbers bear evidence to the huge traffic that these sites get. The reviews posted on them have the potency to impact the final decision of a huge number of prospective customers.
Research reveals that almost 85% of the consumers refuse to go for a hotel with less than 3 star ratings. Positive reviews on the other hand, can benefit your business to a great extent. Probing tells that a majority of customers will not think twice before paying more if a particular room has received a lot of positive feedback.
How to Prevent Customers from Seeing Negative Reviews?
Now you know the kind of fiscal impact that a poor online reputation can create. The next thing to consider is how to avoid the bad consequences of negative reviews. There are 3 ways to do this –
- You can try to delete the review from Expedia or Trip Advisor
- You can respond to the review in a way that shows that you really care about your clients and want to correct the things
- Lastly, you can implement the business practises of yours and opt for implementation of policies that will assist you to prevent customers from feeling alienated
A) How to Delete Negative Reviews from the TripAdvisor or Expedia?
You can remove the adverse reviews from the sites of review but only if you can demonstrate that those reviews are troublesome in some ways.
Various review sites have various rules and it is suggested that you study them thoroughly to augment the odds of getting negative reviews and comments removed. Most of the review sites especially TripAdvisor and Expedia have the rules which they expect people to follow.
If the post is in violating the rules shared in the guidelines then it is likely that such sites may delete the review. There is a high probability that you can remove reviews containing personal attacks from such sites.
B) How to Remove the Negative Reviews?
The hospitality businesses must respond to the reviews of hotels for maintaining their bookings. This is confirmed by a TripAdvisor study. It was seen that hotels that posted responses to reviews were over 19% more likely to get the booking queries through TripAdvisor than those which refrained from replying to the reviews. The businesses that replied to more than 50% of the reviews were around 25% more likely to get a review of booking than the hotels that didn’t reply to the reviews.
So if you need to respond to a review that has something less flattering to say about your establishment, you need to follow the simple ground rules when creating a response. These are enlisted below.
1) Respond Quickly – Reviewers always call for a speedy response. Research suggests that that about 25 percent of people who post negatively about your business expect a reply within an hour. 6% of reviewers also believe that companies should respond within the first 10 minutes.
2) Offer Personalised Address – You should address by the name of reviewer instead of “Sir or Madam” or other generic terms like “esteemed guest”.
3) Apologise for the Bad Experience of the Reviewer – You do not need to take blame if the fault was not yours. But acknowledging the distress that the reviewer had to go through can go a long way in mending relationships.
4) Let the Reviewers Know How You Will Address the Issue – If the problem lies with your facility you should let the reviewer know how you are planning to solve it.
5) Take it Offline – Once you have posted your reply online, it is better to contact the reviewer directly. This shows that you are going to reach out personally for resolving the complaint. This also removes the contentious issue from public eye.
C) Examine the Business Practices of Yours
One way to stop the unflattering reviews is by examining the business practices. For this you should –
1) Review all complaints regarding your business and attempt to find solutions. Analyse and introspect such reviews from a variety of angles.
2) You should try and get to the bottom of the concerns that your guests have raised and then take remedial measures to resolve them. The more commendably you do this, the better reviews you will manage to achieve in future.
3) Most review sites inform hotels if a review is posted about them to ensure that hoteliers can act fast. For better reviews you should try and resolve issues even after the bill is paid.
4) Sometimes no matter how diligent you are, negative reviews are bound to happen. One way to put off the impact of such reviews is encouraging happy and satisfied customers to share their thoughts. So think of achieving positive reviews proactively from guests.
The online reviews can make or break your business in today’s times and this is particularly true for the travel or hospitality businesses. So if you want to steer clear of negative reviews, you must adhere to the suggestions made by the experts of top-notch digital marketing agency in India here for maintaining a positive reputation online. Only then you can survive in the cut-throat competition of this digital age and make it big.
