Real nerve of war nowadays, TripAdvisor is an essential tool for your business in marketing. This article will discuss your e-reputation, how to take care of it, optimize it, take advantage of it.
You don’t have a choice anymore! Facebook, Google, TripAdvisor will create files for you whether you want them or not… You don’t need to ask for them, as long as your business exists, if you are not the initiators, the Internet users will create your file…
Get the control of it as soon as possible that will allow you at least to be kept informed of the last notices.
Recovering your TripAdvisor listing
The real question is how to optimize this part… below, some optimization tips.
Reminder on the TripAdvisor algorithm
Just like Google, of course, Tripadvisor preserves and carefully guards the hundreds of points concerning its ranking. We can still take into consideration the main criteria:
- Notes
- Freshness
- Volume
- Hotel content
- Internet user profile and level
The national average is around 3,88/5
Respond to a TripAdvisor review
Should you reply to a few reviews or to all reviews? First of all, you should know that TripAdvisor counts a lot for your referencing on search engines and the good news… it’s the Internet users who will indirectly contribute to it and who will add keywords that you won’t even think of!
Good news. Not always indeed … it will depend on the opinions.
Some hoteliers think that it is better to let people express themselves without taking sides, but TripAdvisor gives you the opportunity and it is important to restore the truth to minimize the damage.
The basic rule is to analyze and respond to at least all negative reviews by signing the direction (take advantage of this frame to put a simple signature with your email, offering to call.
Of course, to avoid encouraging negative reviews, it is important to respond to positive reviews as well and to elaborate on them by using the referencing terms you have analyzed.
Avoid duplicate content (personalize each response) and always keep in mind that you are responding not to “A previous visitor” but rather to “A large community of prospects.”
Here are some recommendations for handling reviews:
- Take time before responding (prepare the response first, reread it the next day, don’t forget that you are talking to an audience).
- Make effective, short answers, which go to the essential, the Internet users get tired of novels.
- Re-establish the reality, master the information.
- Turn around the negative points and reduce the gaps. Systematically take back the positive elements.
- Contact the writer by clicking on his or her profile? (If necessary, you will have one more element to put in your answer)
- Indicate that you have tried to contact the client and that there has been no response.
- Sign with the first name “Lucie” to reassure the client’s arrival. Speak in the first person (try to put a phone number/direct line in the signature, if Tripadvisor still allows it).
- For good reviews, remember to use “We” to involve the team.
- Value customers who post good reviews.
- No negative words.
- Do not be disrespectful. – Keep your cool – Show that we are human.
- Show and highlight improvements to the hotel.
- Reassure, thank, invite.
- Answer or delete? You have to choose.
How to delete a review on Tripadvisor?
Here are the 15 conditions from the TripAdvisor Terms of Use to delete a review:
- 1: Get in touch with the editor and ask for moderation
- 2 : Defamation
- 3 : Insult
- 4: Wrong place (2)
- 5: Bad writing
- 6: Worthless text
- 7: Promotion to another institution
- 8: If it is a question
- 9: Blackmail (with form)
- 10: Date of stay too far away ( + of 365 Days)
- 11 : Not written by a real traveler ( +16 KM with IP…)
- 12 : Photo and description not appropriate
- 13 : Incomplete/inappropriate customer experience
- 14 : personal opinion (! Request for re-formulation)
- 15 : Duplicate comment on the WEB
If the user’s comment is on this list, feel free to pull out one of the points to support your claim.
To verify #15, I encourage you to copy and paste an element of the text and make an advanced query on google thanks to the quotation marks “I put the review in quotation marks to have the exact similarity”
Unfortunately the only way to reach an account manager is through the platform, TripAdvisor is no longer reachable by email directly or by phone.
You can find the detailed list under the excellent blog Artiref: Remove a TripAdvisor review
How to delete all TripAdvisor reviews
Sometimes it’s better to delete all the reviews to start from scratch. TripAdvisor only allows this in two cases: a major change, substantive and high-quality work, rather than a change of form [OR] a change of owner and team.
You will have to go through more extensive procedures, with proof of work to do so…
Procedure to follow: “this request concerns” – “my establishment” – “update my file”.
Be careful, you will start at 0 in the ranking.
If you don’t get any feedback, you can send an email as a last resort.
TripAdvisor email address
How to delete an establishment on TripAdvisor
In case of permanent closure, you have the possibility to delete your listing.
Delete an establishment page
Outsource the management of your reviews with My Hotel Reputation
My hôtel Réputation, which was created in September 2016, is a company specialized in helping you manage your hotel’s customer reviews. It is a team based in France in Angers in the Anjou region that takes care of accompanying you in your e-reputation.
They propose three offers, from 49€ HT One-Shot and/or monthly processing.
Be careful, they do not claim to always remove the opinions, their main objective being to take care of your image.
Here is their infographic:
Ainsi que leur vidéo de présentation
How to prevent negative reviews
We insist on it: you are talking to a community, never forget it. You should therefore avoid talking about “discounts”, “upgrades” and all the advantages that a dissatisfied customer may have enjoyed. This would encourage other Internet users to do the same.
On the other hand, don’t hesitate to mention the advantages that satisfied customers have obtained thanks to their online reservations.
Let’s face it, maybe not the first one, but over time we learn to recognize customers and determine which ones are likely to cause problems. You’ll need to brief your teams to get them on top of their game!
A large proportion of guests are unwilling to speak up during their stay and may feel that you failed to respond to their concerns. Learn to identify these customers directly and make sure that no customer leaves the hotel dissatisfied with their stay.
Being comfortable with customers and feeling satisfaction is an art, but if you can’t figure out the right methods, I invite you to go have a drink in the lobby of your city’s top 10 hotel during check-out to understand the best way to deal with customers.
If however the customer manages to tell you about his dissatisfaction and you can’t do anything to fix the situation, the best solution to discourage the customer to go and post a review on TripAdvisor is to send him another questionnaire before.
Now that we know how to protect ourselves from negative reviews, we propose to come back to the two main variables of the TripAdvisor algorithm: The rating and the positive reviews, the number of reviews.
How to increase positive reviews
As the statistics of review collectors show: Guest-suite (formerly Vinivi)*, Customer Alliance*, Qualitelis®*, Olakala*, ReviewPro*, Fairguest*…from 2% to 4% of customers will leave a review if they are not surveyed at the end of their stay (or even during their stay, as Expedia does). With one of these solutions, the feedback would be 14% to 17%.
It would be too good to stop there only… you should know that as soon as a customer has GPS and cellular data activated on his smartphone, Facebook and Google will send him “push” messages encouraging him to come and leave a review, a photo.
In the same way, if a customer visits your page on TripAdvisor and is connected to his account, he will soon receive an email encouraging him to return to your TripAdvisor page to leave a review.
It is therefore essential to process the before, during and after your stay. And this should be easier once you have a minimum PMS*.
Here is a list of solutions to filter reviews and encourage the publication of positive reviews
- The stamp : From Artiref, you can develop a personalized stamp that you only take out at check out time, to put on the invoices of satisfied customers.
The business card trick: TripAdvisor offers business cards, but they are not the most “personalized” ones, so don’t hesitate to develop special ones that you HIDE under your desk (possibly with a welcome-back code). Give them to clients who are worth it! - The guestbook trick: Place a bookmark inviting satisfied customers (since they are in the guestbook) to share their experience on TripAdvisor
- The post-stay email: solutions like guest-suite […] or Webcom Agency offer automatic solutions that allow you to filter and redirect only satisfied customers.
- The satisfaction questionnaire at check-out: in the form of a tablet the customer must put his email at the end. An email will be sent to him if the note is above 4/5 with the text to copy and paste.
Sample Business Card
*PMS and review collection solutions will be compared soon.
Why we don’t recommend using TripAdvisor widgets: It sends traffic to TripAdvisor, increases its referencing and can make you lose customers directly… or to other hotels…
How to collect emails?
Here is an exhaustive list (again taken from the very good artiref articles) of methods to get your customers’ emails:
- The booking alias email is valid for 3 months. Prepare an email to prepare your stay (with a map etc..) with a small pre-stay questionnaire and a “mailto” button so that the client can reply with a new, blank email to your chosen address (we will soon prepare a simple template for you)
- On arrival, ask for the confirmation/booking email and take the opportunity to get the reception email address. If the customer does not have it on him, invite him to send you a copy from his room with wifi.
- On arrival, you can ask for the email on the check-in form.
- From the internet connection, at the wifi portal.
- On the satisfaction questionnaires.
- In boxes for contests.
Other solutions can be put in place, the main thing is to appear as natural/transparent as possible.
The little tip for your SEO:
Don’t forget that it’s cheaper, faster and more efficient – at first – to take care of customers from far away countries, than to develop an additional language on your website Take good care of them, ask them if they know (or if they have a similar site), and thank them in advance for their time and contribution they can find at the airport!
And the others…
Don’t forget the reviews on other review sites such as the Yellow Pages, Zoover, Yelp! or even on The Fork.
It’s always a matter of budget/time/means!
