How to Increase Online Reviews for Hotels

Even if hotel guests have a nice stay at your location, that doesn’t mean they’ll go out of their way to leave a review.



In most cases, you have to take an active role when trying to increase online reviews for hotels. Whether it’s setting up easy ways for guests to leave feedback or handing out comment cards after checkout, you can’t just sit back and hope that good praise will come—you have to go after it yourself!

If you’re wondering how you can increase online hotel reviews and gain more bookings, here are a few ways to get started:

➤ Use Email to Your Advantage

Just like how you can use email to send newsletters and promotional deals, you can use email to your advantage by leveraging it as a tool to increase hotel reviews.


For instance, once a guest checks out, you can instantly set up your lifecycle marketing efforts to send a “Thank you” email to guests for their stay along with a simple request to leave a review on social media. A simple ask often does the trick, but if you can also incentivize the review process—with an extra discount or chance to win a free prize—guests may be more excited to get involved.

In any case, you must use email to keep guests’ attention even after they’ve checked out. However, if responses go stale, you have other options to choose from.

➤ SMS Has the Best Open Rates

Email may help increase online reviews for hotels, but in fact, SMS has the best open rates when it comes to guest engagement.

Studies show that SMS messages have a 98% open rate amongst sendees, which means that any inquiries you make about hotel reviews have a great chance of being seen and considered. On the other hand, that also means that you have to encourage guests to leave hotel reviews in a simple way that doesn’t require too much effort. Primarily, this means sending short text messages that include basic links where guests can fill out a Net Promoter Score (NPS). An NPS is basically a customer loyalty survey that allows guests to choose a numbered score of their experience, or choose something as simple as an emoji to best describe their stay.

Rather than a long, drawn-out review process, you can use NPSs for instant reviews and a general sense of customer satisfaction among your clientele.

➤ Focus Your Attention on Social Media

Lastly, the best way to increase online hotel reviews is to focus your attention on social media.

Having active profiles on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Yelp are perhaps the most important platforms that your hotel can be on since most potential guests will check them out before booking a stay with you. That being said, if your social accounts are lacking content or any user-generated content from happy guests, it could negatively impact your chances of gaining new business.

So, your only recourse is to share your social media presence with guests at all times. This means leaving social icons on emails, sharing your social accounts on your hotel website, and using social media as a tool to increase online hotel reviews.

Similar to how you use strategies around SMS and email marketing for hotels, you can use social media accounts to increase online reviews for hotels by inviting guests to share photos of themselves at your locations and use a special hashtag in the caption. For every guest that shares a photo on a certain platform, you can reward them with a special promotion or re-share their photo to show them gratitude and spotlight their experience. Not to mention, the more attention you can gain on social media, the more of an impact you’ll have on other guests who find you organically when searching for a place to stay.


➤ Increase Online Hotel Reviews with BuzzyBooth

It takes time to increase hotel reviews, but with BuzzyBooth, you can find success sooner than you think!

With products and services designed to boost online engagement and guest experiences, you can rest assured that your hotel social media strategies are taken care of. Plus, you’ll have a ton of other benefits to enjoy to help grow your business!

Click here to learn more about BuzzyBooth today! 😄

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

3 Steps to Effective Marketing for Restaurants and Bars

4 Email Marketing Tips for Restaurants

Why Use Email and SMS Marketing for Hotels?