Hotel Reputation Management:

Frequently, hoteliers encounter reviews with no comments. This often causes confusion as to whether or not to reply to such feedback – leading to uncertain responses, which often backfires.

 If you can relate to such a situation, your confusion is legit!

Hence, in this article, we are going to discuss what to do and how to handle customers when you face such scenarios.

Should Hoteliers Respond to Ratings – Only Reviews?

 As a hotelier, we are imbued with the ethics of hotel reputation management – being responsible for replying to all reviews (no matter positive or negative). But in reality, it is an unnecessary practice. Responding to review-only ratings can affect your hotel’s reliability too.

Being adept hotel consultants in India, we often encounter questions related to hotel reputation importance – to which most already know the answer. It gives hotels an excellent opportunity to engage with customers. A simple acknowledgment can help turn unhappy customers into advocates and save your online reputation.

 A study by Harvard Business School shows that responding to reviews is connected with a higher overall star rating – and we know it’s true.

In reality, rating-only reviews have no traveler content to respond to. Only rating without any praise or issue does not give any opportunity to address. Such scenarios may cause you to fall into the trap of writing non-spontaneous responses – which is nothing but a copy & paste response. And these generic reviews impart the impression among clients that the hoteliers aren’t investing their time and effort to share real responses.

Even if someone shares a five-star rating, it may be tempting to respond. But you cannot reply to it much, other than a simple “thank you.” Without any personalized reviews, users may think that it’s a bot pushing the same responses for all reviews.

Honestly, reviews are of different types: some oozing praises, some with negative comments, and others with subtle conceptions and misconceptions. But responding to these reviews with a proper strategy is what makes the difference and makes clients’ trust your customer service. And such competent strategies can only be strategized by experienced hotel brand reputation management teams – having the knowledge and insights of customers in the industry.

Do Reviews Website Permit Reviews Without Comments?

To nail your hotel reputation management, you must know how OTAs and review websites handle the ratings and reviews. Different OTA sites have their own rules for writing and receiving reviews – often blocking property sites that push repetitive responses.

 So, in other words, when it comes to your Hotel Reputation Management and the reviews you share online, the decision is already made for you.

TripAdvisor: This review site does not allow guests to leave rating-only reviews. To submit a review, guests have to submit a comment along with TripAdvisor ratings. Meaning every review gives you the opportunity to provide personalized responses to guests.

Google: It is that one review site that allows hoteliers to respond to rating-only reviews. As an experienced Hotel Reputation Management team, we advise not to respond to such reviews to avoid repetitive or taped responses.

Expedia: They have rating-only reviews and also give hoteliers the opportunity to respond to these reviews. And if the hotelier responds, the guest receives the response privately.

Booking.com: Does not allow rating-only review.

As a customer-centric industry, the ability to listen to customers should be your number one priority. You must capture guests’ sentiments and give them the response they have been looking for in the first place – and without understanding the complex analytics and studying the customer behavior, it isn’t possible to know how to respond aptly.

Take control of your brand’s reputation and get insights into your guests’ experience with Incode Business Services hotel reputation management solutions. Improve your customers’ experiences, impact their reviews and ratings, and outperform your competitors based on smart data – starting today.