• Profanity or threats
• Personal insults
• Reports of violent criminal activity
• Text entirely in ALL CAPS
• Hearsay
• Content not relevant to tourists
• HTML
• Commercial web addresses,
• e-mail addresses or phone numbers for
• promotional purposes
A lot can be derived from the “do not” list as stated earlier and some common sense. If you understand the behavior of travelers and how they “live” the experience even after the trip / vacation is over, you will know what to expect when it comes to being reviewed on TripAdvisor. While the reviews can overstate or understate your property, almost all type of reviews can be easily addressed with these simple guidelines-
Acknowledge: One of the prime reasons travelers review a property on TripAdvisor is to be “heard” and to feel “important”. What hoteliers should remember is that the reviewer is looking for an “ego” boost
Address the concerns: Most of the complaints about the services / amenities, you will notice, are generally of low concern and easy to avoid. However, such complaints generally never reach the hotels and continue to be a pain area. With an assurance to look into the “concerns” and taking appropriate actions go a long way in pacifying an irate guest as the hunger for being “heard” and being “important” is satiated.
Remove doubts: A lot of reviews will include incorrect information about the property or may be based on limited information. This is your window to remove the doubts or concerns with correct information.
Promote: While TripAdvisor does not permit outright promotion, you can “inform” the reviewer or the readers about your services and products. If the review speaks highly of a particular service, you can add more information to let readers know just why a guest appreciated a particular service. For adverse comments, the above point is a hint to how you can promote in a subtle way.
Think SEO: Reviews and Management Responses are indexed by Google. It makes sense to make the Management Responses Search Engine friendly by adding commonly searched queries related to your hotel or F&B outlets. With TripAdvisor ranking high in search results, you can expect your hotel’s listing to be viewed more often than other hotels by optimizing the content of Management Responses.
