Feedback from customers is a vital part of any business. It allows you to interact with your clients more personally and get insight into their experience using your product or service.
Still, several owners of smaller properties in the hospitality industry often overlook the importance of feedback. Preferring to stay in the shadows, not encouraging guests to leave reviews, maybe scared of negative remarks, they don’t understand the positive power of getting feedback.
So, before we look at different ways to encourage guests to leave reviews for your hotel, let us find out why feedback is important.
Benefits of guest reviews for a hotel
Scope for improvement
The most apparent reason for feedback is to discover areas that need improvement. From the cleanliness of your rooms to the food quality of the in-house restaurant, feedback from guests gives you a better picture of how the hotel operates from an outsider’s viewpoint.
Customer service
Feedback allows you the opportunity to provide better customer service. For example, a guest does not like the room size of your hotel and decides not to stay with you again. They don’t leave feedback, and thus, you never find out. But if they do leave one, you can tell them about bigger rooms in your inventory or the possibility of having two interconnected rooms.
Branding
Feedback, particularly online, is as good as word-of-mouth promotion. Travelers nowadays spend considerable time going through online reviews before making a booking. Reviews on OTAs, your website, blogs, and listings in trade and travel articles, help build upon your brand.
Marketing
Reviews are organic and make for excellent marketing material. Highlighting reviews from real people who have stayed with you on your website or social media presents your property as an authentic stay.
Now, one might think getting reviews is easy. It’s just a question of asking the guest for some feedback.
While that may be true, remember that not all guests feel comfortable giving face-to-face feedback. Moreover, some need time to gather their thoughts, while others prefer a more anonymous option.
Ways to encourage guests to leave reviews for your hotel
On-Site
A popular way to get instant guest reviews is to have a feedback option near the reception. You can install an iPad with feedback software for the guest to fill out quickly after checking out.
Moreover, the staff at the reception can always request the customer, informing them that the process is not time-consuming.
Furthermore, they can say that the hotel would appreciate their thoughts and, if needed, explain how feedback helps the hotel and staff provide better service.
The above kind of personal request is an excellent way to encourage guests to leave a review for your hotel. It can be done at the reception, by the chef or staff of your restaurant, or by the concierge.
App or Smart TV
If your hotel has a designated App, getting reviews can be easily integrated into the software. On the last day, a pop-up or notification will give the guest ample time to complete a feedback survey.
Moreover, you can integrate options to seamlessly share feedback on review sites and OTAs from where the customer might have booked the hotel room.
Social media
Social media reviews are extremely helpful in getting the word out about your hotel to a larger audience.
Therefore, promotion through reviews and feedback is an excellent point to remember when your sales team collaborates with your hotel marketing agency.
There are a couple of ways to get feedback and use it for marketing on social media.
Influencer marketing
A leading hotel marketing agency like Adigital can help you with influencer marketing that involves reviews, feedback, and USP highlights by online celebrities with clout.
In-room cards
At the same time, a more standard method is to place informational cards in every room with links and hashtags to all your social media handles.
Additionally, it can have a little note asking guests to leave a review. And codes that guests can scan to instantly open the hotel’s listing on websites like TripAdvisor.
Performance cards
When looking only for feedback, you can place department-wise performance cards in the hotel rooms, spa, restaurant, and reception. Although helpful in streamlining operations, these cards have little to no effect on the hotel’s marketing strategy.
Postcards
In addition to in-room cards, you can place all your social media information behind postcards guests want to take home as souvenirs. These are great reminders for leaving a review after the guest leaves.
Email marketing
Several hotel owners struggling with marketing their properties are under the wrong impression that email marketing only happens before a guest arrives.
On the contrary, it is an effective way to stay in contact with guests from before their arrival to after they have left.
Email during a stay
When looking at ways to encourage guests to leave reviews for your hotel, emailing during their residency is very beneficial.
Not only does it allow the guest to leave feedback while it is fresh in their mind, but it also enables you to fix anything they might not have liked. Attending to any shortfalls immediately can sometimes lead to a guest changing a negative review into a positive one.
Email after stay
Similarly, you can include feedback and review links with a request in your follow-up thank you email after the guest has left.
Again, this is done relatively soon after their departure, when their thoughts are fresh, and they are more likely to leave a review.
Follow-up request
At times guests may leave a review on your website, send you a card, or send an email thanking you for your service and facilities.
In such a case, emailing them and requesting to post the review on social media and booking sites is perfectly fine.
Newsletter
If your hotel has a monthly e-newsletter, and it should, then having a clearly marked link for reviews and feedback is advisable. You can have it in all your newsletters, changing the link’s location and asking your hotel marketing agency to analyze the data and see which location leads to more clicks.
Website
Another benefit of working with a hotel marketing agency is that you can alter and design your hotel website as and when needed based on your area of focus. One of these is encouraging guests to leave reviews.
Having reviews from past customers highlighted on your website serves two purposes. Firstly, it assists with sales as prospective clients get a better picture of your service and facilities from people who have experienced them.
At the same time, having photos and names of guests mentioned along with their reviews, as well as special blog features on them, can encourage others to leave a review.
Points to remember when encouraging hotel guests to leave reviews
To get maximum reviews for your hotel, work with a marketing agency to expand your project’s scope. At Adigital, we work closely with your sales team to formulate a strategy that assists with more direct bookings and revenue generation via different techniques.
At the same time, when planning on different ways to encourage guests to leave reviews for your hotel, one should also keep in mind the following points;
- Ethical Vs. Unethical – It is acceptable to request reviews from your guests. However, one should not offer them cash or kind rewards for a positive review.
- Make the entire process of leaving feedback and reviews fast, convenient, and straightforward. Have links that take the guests directly to the review site, give them plenty of review options, and promote it in such a manner that it is not overbearing on the customer.
- It’s okay to ask a guest for a review a day before they leave. Typically, they have formed an opinion by that time. Moreover, they have time to give a detailed review, unlike at checkout when they may be in a hurry.
- Always try and respond to reviews and feedback, especially negative ones. Again, if time limits you from doing so, include this as one of the tasks your hotel marketing agency can handle for you.
