Competition is fierce when it comes to securing hotel bookings and guest feedback in the form of reviews can make or break a prospective guest’s booking decision. Enabling guests to leave reviews should be a core strategy for hotels. 

Influencing guests to choose your hotel over countless others hinges on guest experiences. If previous guests have had a great time and have had their expectations met and even surpassed, then potential future guests will have more confidence to book. But how will these potential guests know about the experiences of previous guests? Unless someone can easily find reviews about a hotel, they will probably book elsewhere. 

Not all reviews are valuable to a hotel of course. Either positive or negative hotel guest reviews will impact someone’s decision to book or not. Depending on the content of a negative review, just one critical review can lead many potential bookers to look elsewhere. Whichever way you cut it, guest feedback really matters. 

For hotels, good reviews can make a transformational difference. These reviews make your property stand out against others with less favourable reviews, bringing more bookings as a result. This can spark a positive cycle of more bookings, great guest experiences which bring more good reviews and yet more bookings. In fact one point increase in guest satisfaction can result in 1.3% increase in RevPAR, according to Cornell.   

However, getting positive rather than negative reviews is fundamental to success. Gaining good reviews starts with exceptional service but it goes beyond this too. Encouraging guests to leave reviews by making the process straightforward and engaging positively with them during their stay can significantly increase positive guest feedback comments. Personalised touches, prompt resolution of any issues and consistently asking for feedback can create a culture of excellence, often reflected in the reviews. 

Additionally, responding to reviews both positive and negative demonstrates a hotel’s commitment to improving and appreciating hotel guest feedback. Sometimes dealing with negative online reviews in a transparent, honest and caring way can still result in a positive impression of a hotel. This is why the question what is the importance of hotel reviews? remains so relevant for hoteliers today. 

To ensure positive reviews can have an impact on your hotel and its bookings, it’s important to have systems in place to actually enable guests to give feedback. Some guests will always leave reviews on third party platforms such as TripAdvisor, Google and social media channels, making it important for hotels to regularly check these channels for reviews. 

But using a guest feedback system in hospitality integrated into your current processes puts you in the driving seat of asking for feedback. Examples of these systems include Customer Alliance, ReviewPro, Revinate and the guest experience platforms offered by TrustYou. 

Ultimately, these platforms facilitate the collection, analysis and display of guest feedback in a way that makes sense for your hotel. Many systems are also able to perform additional guest review analysis to generate sentiment ratings and highlight persistent issues that guests mention. This means hotels can react to emerging issues quickly, particularly if a platform enables real-time feedback during a guest’s stay too. 

Integrating a hotel guest feedback system into a hotel’s wider tech stack, particularly its booking engine and Property Management System (PMS), can be incredibly beneficial. It means you could entirely streamline the process of gathering and managing reviews. This includes from the point of booking and throughout their stay. By embedding tools within the booking engine, hotels can encourage guests to leave reviews immediately after their stay when their experiences are fresh in their minds. This increases the likelihood of receiving feedback and helps capture immediate impressions which are usually the most genuine. 

Linking a hotel feedback system with a PMS means feedback trends can be analysed. You can also group individual comments into themes to tailor your services as much as possible. Adjusting services or training staff in response can make all the difference. 

Integration also makes automation in soliciting hotel guest feedback a possibility. This reduces the manual effort required by staff which is a great help to hotels in the current age of staff shortages. It also ensures consistency in follow-ups. When feedback is directly linked to guest profiles in the PMS, hotels can easily identify and reward repeat guests and gain a holistic impression of a guest’s overall interaction with the hotel. 

Contact us to find out more about how SIHOT solutions work with your existing technology vendors to ensure the perfect tech stack for your hotel – and how to make the most of guest feedback to secure more bookings.