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While planning their travel, people usually lay down their requirements and then search for the best property to stay from a multitude of options available, online or offline. Undoubtedly, there are a plethora of choices available nowadays, where ranking and reviews play a big role in helping travellers narrow down their choices and take a quick decision. Of course, the hotels with less or no reviews at all are considered less trusted by travellers, since it indicates that probably not many people must have visited or liked that property. This, in turn, means less number of bookings for the hotel and therefore a loss of revenue. Not an ideal situation, certainly!

It is quite clear from the above that guest feedback and reviews are of utmost importance in the current scenario, on which depends the fate of the hotel — reputation, reservations and ultimately, revenues. With so much at stake, hotels all around the world are laying extra emphasis on delivering an excellent experience to their guests and then ensuring that most of them share their experience, which would help them improve their services and grow their business by ensuring high visibility.

An increase in the number of reviews (positive or negative), or the lack of it, can make or break the image of the hotel. Moreover, with the internet being a magical thing in the hands of all, travellers can check reviews of any hotel around the world in seconds. As a result, the industry has become cautious than ever before. The significance and volume of online reviews have grown over the period of time. In fact, Online Reputation Management has emerged as a key function in the hospitality industry, with distinct, expert professionals dedicated towards the fulfillment of the task.

Having said that, it is certainly not that easy to have your guests scribble a few lines or perhaps a few words about their experience at your hotel. Below are some quick tips for hoteliers to encourage maximum guest feedback and reviews –

1) The earlier, the better — Do not delay the process of feedback collection; the guest might lose interest to share one if it gets too late. The best time to ask them about the same is while they are still at your property, preparing for check-out. This presents an excellent opportunity for hoteliers to collect authentic feedback and you still have an opportunity to transform a negative experience into a positive one. In case you are unable to collect the feedback at the time of check-out, make sure you do the same within a few days or maximum within a week. If done later than that, it is most likely going to be a futile attempt.

2) Know your guest — Each guest arriving at your hotel is going to be unique, having a different set of expectations, outlook, choice and of course, different age and gender. Hence, sticking to only one way of feedback collection might not lead to results and adopting different channels for a different set of guests could be the ideal way. Of course, one particular guest should not be bombarded with multiple kinds of surveys, or you will end up irritating him. Therefore, it is important to know your guest right and pick up the best channel for feedback collection, depending upon the type of guest. For example, a paper survey might work well for some, while an online email survey will be better suited for a few others. Some travellers might choose to drop a review on the hotel’s mobile app, while some might take to a review platform.

3) Deliver a fantastic experience — Make feedback collection an exciting activity, which is possible only if you know that you have done the ground work right; i.e. when you make sure that the guests have had a delightful stay at your property and everything was in the right order according to their requirements. Once you know that you are at a flawless side, and you have given the guests enough good points to talk about, you must not be scared to ask for a feedback. Moreover, a guest, if satisfied, is most likely to leave a positive note and will be most pleased to do the same at the time of check-out itself. So, grab the opportunity and increase your chances of generating maximum reviews, and that too, positive.

4) Be precise — Guests might choose to skip the feedback process entirely if the survey method is too cluttered or lengthy. Therefore, it is important to keep it simple and to ask relevant questions, which would not take too much time and serve your purpose at the same time. For example, asking the guests how was their stay and what is the one thing that could be done to improve their experience, usually works well. In addition, in case you are providing an e-check out the facility to your guests, you could also redirect them to publish their reviews on Google reviews where feedback can be shared quite conveniently.

5) Enhance your online presence, especially on social media — A key platform with tremendous brand building potential where you can easily receive maximum guest feedback is online, especially through the social media channels. In fact, according to a survey, 93% of global travellers make their bookings based on online reviews. A separate survey reveals that 53% of the travellers would not even book a hotel that does not have online reviews. These reviews can be positive or negative, but the number of online reviews definitely play an important role. Hoteliers must keep a constant check on this channel and devise an appropriate strategy to get maximum feedback there and to respond to the same in the best manner. Remember, today’s tech savvy traveller is constantly glued to social media for even the tiniest requirements, and hotels with the right social media strategy could easily take a front position in the competitive race, and attract maximum bookings.

6) Do not offer incentives for reviews — Hotels must definitely encourage guests to provide reviews and should not be afraid of asking for it outright. However, they should not resort to the method of providing incentives (freebies and discounts) to guests for doing the same, as it could hamper the image of the hotel to a large extent. Incentives could be offered for a variety of other things so that the guest becomes happy and is automatically prompted to share a feedback. Offering incentives could be looked down by some as a cheap tactic and the review could be regarded as a paid review.

7) Convey that you value the guest feedback — Asking for feedback should never come across as a forced exercise. Rather, the guest should know that the hotel values their presence at the property and therefore their feedback is extremely valuable. Physical materials like window stickers and medium sized cards stating the importance of guest feedback could be placed at right locations that work as constant reminders to them that it is important for them to share their experience.

Follow these quick tips to generate a higher volume of guest feedback, which would further improve your online position and ranking on search engines and review sites. As your visibility improves, your potential guests can easily locate your hotel online. Moreover, when they flip through the feedback (positive or negative), your hotel certainly appears reliable and trustworthy in comparison to competitors. Remember, your guests are your true brand advocates!

Managing rates and inventory across a single channel is a difficult task, but this problem is further compounded when the hotel has to manage it for multiple online travel agents. All the responsibility comes on the shoulders of the hotel’s revenue manager (RM)

If you as an RM of the hotel are updating inventory manually across multiple OTAs, then you are missing the opportunity to engage directly with your customers and wasting your precious time, which you could have spent strategizing. Your competition, however, may be doing things differently and may be using the latest technology to manage inventory automatically.

Managing distribution via few clicks is possible; however, there are a few points to consider when choosing a channel manager for your hotel.

Below are some of the features that you as a Revenue Manager should keep on top of your mind before you commit to a channel manager, as once you buy the solution moving to a different one can be an even arduous task.

Ability to connect with as many channels — Distributing rates and inventory to more channels can lead to higher sales; therefore, your channel manager should be capable enough to distribute your hotel’s inventory to the maximum number of channels, which are most prominent in the market.

Fast and up to date room inventory administration — Your future channel manager should support a pooled inventory across channels, which will not only reduce your burden to keep allocation updated, but will also increase your hotel’s productivity from all channels by ensuring rate and availability parity.

Easy linking of multiple room rate of channels to a single product for faster updates –Tapping multiple channels is important, but managing multiple room/rate type combinations is also important. The real test of a channel manager is if it is capable of updating room rates and availability of say hundreds of room and rate combinations at one go. For this, a mapping needs to be done at the channel manager’s end, which must be simple enough to ensure the hotel can do it themselves.

Ability to connect to desired channels instantly — It is one of the primary requirements for hotels to support numerous online portals. However, it is equally important that adding a new channel is equally easy for a hotel. A user-friendly channel manager should enable easy connection with new distribution channels automatically.

Contract facilitation with new OTA — While a channel manager may be supporting channels in the source market of a hotel, but if the hotel has no connection with that OTA then the support is futile. A channel manager, therefore, is able to assist by acting as a liaison in such a case between OTA and hotel for contracting purposes. This will surely help the hotel in increasing their spread and thereby creating a demand from a new channel that was not available to them earlier.

365 days update with one-click –A modern and advanced channel distribution system should allow update of up to 365 days on all respective channels selected.

Connectivity with OTA as well as PMS — A comprehensive channel manager should be capable of sending ARI updates (Availability, Rates & Inventory) to OTAs and send a reservation confirmation back to PMS of the hotel.

Capability to change prices based on allocation change — An effective channel manager should be advanced enough to enable users to create rules, which can change the prices of rooms based on inventory availability. This practice leads to higher revenue generation for the hotel.

Promotion management — Your prospective channel manager must be able to send promotions to the OTA, so that you stay ahead of your competition. This will save a lot of effort as well as keep all promotions data within a single tool for ease of management and tracking.

Tax customization per channel — OTAs do not operate and present room rates in the same fashion; some offer room rates inclusive of tax while others will have rates with tax exclusive. A comprehensive channel manager should be able to take care of this aspect. It should allow hoteliers to post rates in one format and the tool should be smart enough to do relevant calculations for tax and post it to the respective extranet sites.

Support multiple users and properties — Whether you are an independent hotel or an enterprise chain, the selected channel manager should be able to support multiple users for a single property as well as multiple properties for multiple users. Channel manager should have the facility to manage these users as per their applicable rights in the tool.

OTA throughput analytics — When a hotel sells the majority of its inventory through multiple online channels, then it becomes imperative for revenue managers to evaluate the performance of each of their online distribution channels to comprehend their productivity and revenue coming from each OTA platform thereby assisting RMs in designing a hotel’s revenue management strategy.

Mobile Access — A channel manager that can be accessed through mobile is not a luxury anymore. Users should be able to update and perform all tasks through mobile version, so as to be updated all the time.

24X7 customer support — Your technology solution provider should offer you 24X7 customer support. Even better if a dedicated account manager is assigned to your hotel.

If you follow these basic rules when you purchase your next channel manager, your life would be easier and your hotel would be able to reap the benefits of total revenue management.

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A couple of years ago I came across an article published by an Italian blog titled “Pizzeria sues TripAdvisor for psychological abuse”. I was intrigued and honestly curious to understand how a review site could possibly psychologically damage an inanimate thing like a restaurant, as I was sure that psychological traumas were a prerogative of mankind and, to a certain extent, animals.

Digging through the blog I discovered that the owner of the pizzeria (I quote literally) “reserved the right to refuse to serve TripAdvisor users, because” he continued, “We are here to work and not to be the target of the frustration of reviewers”.

As the name of the pizzeria was published in the article, I went online and checked his reputation and, not surprisingly, not only it was very bad (actually it was terrible), but the manager responses to the client comments were full of insults and threats.

Now, as a former hotel General Manager, I know how frustrating it can be when you do your best and guests slash you on review sites anyway, but that is part of the game. At the end of the day, you will not be able to make everybody love you. That is true for anything in life. Therefore, the only thing you can do (unless the reviews are completely misleading, and in that case, you can always report them to the review site for further investigation and possible removal) is to swallow your ego, calm down and apologize. I was feeling bad for the owner of the pizzeria and I imagined him as a 70-something old school Naple guy that never get out of the pre-web era, so I tried to contact him privately to give him some advises because, with this approach, he was actually damaging his business (giving the F-word to a client is never a good idea). To my big surprise, when I finally reached him, I discovered that he was around my age and pretty familiar with social networks too.

We had a long chat and I explained to him some best practices in order to deal with the (unavoidmakable) occasional bad reviews (all for free, of course). I didn’t really expect gratitude, and I did it just because I felt bad for the guy, but what he said to me at the end of the conversation shocked me: he accused me to work secretly for TripAdvisor and he told me that I wanted him to buy something from the famous review site. At that point, I stopped any kind of contact with him, as the whole situation was turning into an Illuminati-like conspiracy and I honestly did not want to waste more time on it.

Nevertheless, this incident made me think about how restaurants and hotels managers underestimate the power of reviews when it comes to food & beverage.

Within my clients, I have a hotel with an amazing two-Michelin-star restaurant but, even though they actively reply professionally to every single review published on the hotel review sites, the restaurant TripAdvisor page stays on an incredible state of abandonment. Even worse, whenever they receive a bad review, they try to report it in order to move it to the restaurant page. They use the restaurant review page as the hotel parachute. And we are talking about one of the best places you can eat in southern Italy.

Sure, often hotel restaurants are forgettable (at best), overpriced and the majority of guests eat there as a last resort because the closest restaurant in town is half an hour Uber ride away, but does this mean that you have to give up managing your online reputation tout court? I doubt it.

Listening to your guests is, as always, the golden rule. However, there is another one that’s often forgotten: when was the last time you ate at your restaurant? I am sure between your duties as a general manager you have to inspect rooms, meet your staff and speak to your attendants on a daily basis, but how much time do you spend in the kitchen?

Everybody is complaining about the quality of the veggies on Yelp? Well, maybe it is time to change your distributors. The name of that rude F&B Manager pops out on every single review. I think you should have a chat vis-à-vis with him and solve the issue once for all.

Hotel restaurants have the tendency of being seen as sons of a lesser God when it comes to hospitality: as long as rooms are clean and Wi-Fi works fine then there is no need to worry about the undercooked pasta. They are conceived as unanimated appendages to the main entity: the hotel. However, the reality is that they are not. Even though they do not necessarily reflect the hotel style and vibe, it does not mean they are just tools to make some ancillary revenue. Especially if your hotel is located far from the city center, it is vital that you give your guests a great experience. Would you risk destroying your hotel online reputation just because you serve watered down margaritas? I do not think so. Great experience can mean good prices too. If you know that your restaurant is average, it can be a good idea to review your à-la-carte menu to make it look less like a robbery. Remember that with the rise of mobile and social networks your reputation is just one click away so sometimes listening to your clients when they are in the restaurant is not enough.

Therefore, what you should do to actively monitoring your restaurant online reputation?

We gathered 10 golden rules to improve your restaurant experience:

Collect and aggregate data from all the review sites that mention your property and your competitors. This will give you a better understanding of what is working and what needs to be improved. There are modern online reputation management tools that can do it for you, so adapt an online reputation technology that could simplify all the unstructured data in way that is more actionable. Insight on what are reviewers writing about your restaurant, is crucial to identify the gaps and improve guest experience.

Use an online reputation management tool to map your service style and cuisine with your competitors so that you can benchmark and improve by doing apple-to-apple comparison. Remember that Devil is in detail of guest experience.

Once you start analyzing your competitive set, focus on key metrics for these four categories a) Food & Beverage: consistency, freshness, value for money, portion size, smell, taste and temperature. b) Dining Experience: business hours, greeting, internet access, location, parking, restrooms, seating room and standing room. c) Service: Quality and speed. d) Ambiance: cleanliness, décor design, atmosphere, comfort, heating and cooling, noise isolation and lighting.

That should be understood, but claim all your pages. You should always have control over those and make sure there are no duplicates. It’s free and easy to do and you can add a lot of useful information like your location, your average price, etc.;

Reply to ALL your reviews. Not only the bad ones, ALL of them. If your clients are happy then just thank them, if they’re angry apologize and promise that you will make everything in your power to improve the service

Do not focus on TripAdvisor only. There are dozens of directories out there: Dineout.co.nz, Facebook, Foodio54, Google, Opentable, Restaurant.com, TopTable.co.uk, Yell, Yelp, Zomato etc. Make sure to be listed and active on all of these. Your online reputation management tool can help you to structure data and get all your online mentions in real time.

Foodies love images: think about opening an Instagram account and share your best dishes every day. You can create a hashtag to give to your clients too, so they will share more images and you will have free contents on a daily basis!

Foodies love videos too: you can think about connecting your Google MyBusiness page to a YouTube channel and publish an interview to the chef or a video of your bartender preparing a perfect Martini Dry. These kind of contents are always appreciated;

You can think about inviting influencers to your restaurant and get a great article written on their blogs. It can be expensive, but usually the return on branding is totally worth it.

Last but not least: create a proper strategy: improvisation is good for jazz, but not if you want to re-brand your restaurant.

So, is managing restaurant’s online reputation a priority for hotel general managers? It surely is, if you focus & leverage on technology it can turn out to be a Secret Sauce in enhancing your Hotel Brand.