.svg "SuitePad Logo")
In this blog, we delve into the depths of how guest engagement during the stay profoundly shapes the narrative of post-stay reviews and why it should be a cornerstone of every hospitality business.
In today's digital world, where online reviews hold immense influence over consumer decisions, the hospitality industry faces the challenge of ensuring guest satisfaction throughout the entire guest journey. Even a single review with enough impressions can make or break a hotel’s entire brand image.
According to a survey commissioned by Tripadvisor and Ipsos MORI, traveler reviews are the ultimate go-to for insider info, with a whopping 72% of respondents always or frequently checking them out before deciding where to stay, dine, or explore. When it comes to accommodation, 82% always or frequently read reviews before booking a place to stay. Plus, 79% are more likely to opt for a hotel with a higher rating, and 52% would never even consider booking a spot with zero reviews. These stats reveal just how crucial positive reviews are in shaping travel decisions and the undeniable significance of guest feedback in today's consumer landscape.
Step 1: CHECK IN With Your Guests During the Stay
There are various ways to ensure a remarkable guest experience, but engagement during the stay is the most crucial element. Reaching out to guests while they are on your premises creates a lasting impression and sets the stage for positive feedback. It’s also an important practice that showcases your hotel’s commitment to guest satisfaction. Utilizing tools such as in-room tablets for push messages or quick feedback, you can proactively reach out to guests to inquire about their experience and ensure their needs are being met.
This personal touch demonstrates attentiveness and provides an opportunity to address any concerns or requests your guests might have had while they are still in your space, allowing you to turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one and shape the narrative of your positive reviews. This way, you can show genuine care and create a sense of comfort, making your guests feel valued and appreciated.
Engaging with guests during their stay also enables you to address any concerns or challenges promptly. This way, hotels can proactively identify and resolve issues before they escalate, ensuring a seamless and enjoyable experience. Whether it's a maintenance request, room preference adjustment, or resolving a billing concern, quickly taking action shows the hotel's commitment to guest satisfaction and creates a positive impression. When guests witness their concerns being addressed efficiently, they are more likely to appreciate the hotel's responsiveness and share their positive experiences in their post-stay reviews. However, reaching the guests at every possible moment has its own disadvantages. If you do not have an easy and seamless way of receiving feedback, your guests can feel overwhelmed.
SuitePad offers a remedy with its "Quick-Feedback" feature, allowing hoteliers to inquire about guests' satisfaction levels during their stay. True to its name, this feature enables you to reach your guests in their hotel rooms to quickly check their moods. Instead of answering extensive questions or rating the various hotel services on a scale of 1-10, they can simply choose between three smileys (happy, indecisive, and sad) to show how happy they are with their stay so far. Plus, a push notification with a quick feedback survey can be timed to reach your guests when they use SuitePad most frequently, reaching them exactly where they are and ensuring that even the most tentative guest can be tempted to leave feedback.
Step 2: Do Not Miss a Single Review
If you provided a great guest experience and checked in with your guests regularly, you should receive good reviews. But the work doesn't end here because you have to take care of your reviews and respond to them as best as you can. Another collaborative survey of Tripadvisor and Ipsos MORI showed that 79% of travelers think that personalized responses from owners make reviews more useful, highlighting the importance of effective review management.
This is where tools like GuestRevu come into place. They offer an effective Online Reputation Management (ORM) tool that enables you to track and manage your business’ online reputation effortlessly. Since hotels are more likely to get reviews after the guest's stay, hotels can benefit from GuestRevu's post-stay guest surveys that integrate with Tripadvisor, enabling guests to publish their reviews straight from the survey without logging into Tripadvisor.
By collecting reviews from prominent review sites and providing real-time alerts for new feedback, you can promptly respond to reviews across different platforms, not missing a single review, while simultaneously increasing your online reviews.
With this type of control over your feedback, you can focus on responding to each one of them personally, making sure that you are painting a picture of a reliable brand; a brand that makes guest satisfaction a priority.
Step 3: Mastering Guest Feedback
Now that you have inspired your guests to leave in-stay feedback to identify potential issues, collected post-stay reviews, and made sure you did not miss any of them, the time has come for the next important step: responding to your guests.
While there are general rules on how to respond, like being prompt, appreciative, and genuine while always making sure the key issues are addressed with a positive tone, the first thing to consider when it comes to mastering guest feedback is to be personal. If the response sounds like an automated mass message or reads like it is a copy-pasted product of a template, your guest might feel like you do not care about the feedback at all. In that case, it is safe to say that not responding may be even better than responding with a repetitive template. That is because when people leave reviews, it is a reflection that they care about your hotel and that they spared time to have a conversation, whether it’s positive or negative. So, in return, they expect the hotel to show the same care when addressing their feedback. Surely, this attention to detail requires time and effort that sometimes can’t be compromised, but with an effective review management system, you can streamline your feedback cycle and save valuable time. 
To make this process even more effective and easy, you can use AI reply review assistants like MARA. The only thing you need to do is copy-paste your review, and in seconds, the assistant generates a personalized reply, saving you precious time while making sure each answer is personalized and unique. The generated replies also follow the guidelines mentioned before, turning the best practices for mastering guest feedback into useful suggestions. Also, as a bonus, you are keeping up with the latest trends in the hospitality industry, increasing the intelligence of your guest experience.
If you would like to dive deeper into how to manage your feedback effectively, please check out our latest webinar, Mastering Guest Feedback.
Conclusion
In today's consumer landscape, where online reviews have a significant impact on decision-making, recognizing the role of guest engagement in shaping positive reviews is paramount. Luckily, with an effective guest engagement strategy and the help of practical tools, receiving, managing, and optimizing your reviews is easier than before. Now, all you need to do is take the necessary steps to make the most of the guest journey, discover the potential of the during-stay phase to strengthen your brand image and create positive guest experiences.
📸 Copyright: SuitePad, GuestRevu & MARA
Published on 23 August 2023
