Responding to complaints and criticisms is a very definite learned skill in online hotel marketing – we show you how.
Following up on our article on How to manage your hotel’s reputation online, we detail specific and straightforward guidelines for online hotel marketing teams to respond to negative hotel reviews. In the past, a customer’s bad experience may go as far as several friends. Now, a negative hotel review can be viewed by almost the entire world literally in only a matter of seconds. Read more …
Determine when not to respond: Sometimes the best online hotel marketing strategy for dealing with negative reviews is to simply ignore them. If you can answer yes to any of the following questions, it may be smarter not to respond to the review at all:
- Are other users of the website already disagreeing with the initial review?
- Has the user left many negative reviews on the site – are they a ‘born complainer’?
- Is this the only negative review out of dozens of positive ones?
If you have answered yes to more than two of these questions, it may be best not to respond to the review. When there is a ‘troll’ on a blog who is posting inflammatory comments, it is sometimes best not to fan the flames and let the fire burn out quickly.
Deciding to respond: Your online hotel marketing team must assess each case individually and decide whether to respond and what action to take. If you don’t respond, you not only run the risk of the review ‘growing legs’ and spreading across the internet, but you miss an opportunity to retain a customer and to possibly right a genuine wrong.
Good responses outweigh bad experiences: In most cases, you can actually improve your reputation online by handling a negative review well. It isn’t only the customer in question that will notice, either; potential and past customers will often respond better to a hotel that is consistent, mature and proactive in its handling of bad reviews through internet hotel marketing.
Respond in a calm manner: There are two things you need to do before you start typing anything in your response box. First, try to determine the facts of the situation. Secondly, make sure you’ve calmed down and are seeing both sides of the situation before you start your response. Don’t write anything that sounds angry, sarcastic or negative, even if it is ‘veiled’.
Apologise for the way the customer is feeling: If it isn’t appropriate, you don’t need to apologise for the situation that occurred or your staff’s action. However, saying something like “I’m sorry that you felt so unsatisfied with your experience” in no way admits guilt, but does help to start on a conciliatory note and help appease the hotel customer.
Correct the facts if appropriate: If a customer’s bad hotel review is based on incorrect facts, correct them politely. Check with the owner of the review website also – if a review is libellous or false you may be able to have it taken down. Even if the facts are false, don’t threaten either the reviewer or the review site – you’ll only damage your hotel’s reputation.
Decide on compensation: In most cases the value of a night’s hotel stay or upgrade is far less than the potential damage to your hotel’s reputation and future earnings. If you decide to offer the customer compensation, state within your response what it will be, and ask for the customer’s direct contact details so you can provide it.
A large part of the hotel industry is built on repeat business and referrals and responding to bad reviews is an important part of internet hotel marketing. However, sometimes it’s good to have a second opinion on your handling of the situation – contact us at Hotel Internet Marketing and we can put together an online reputation management policy as part of your overall online hotel marketing strategy.
