Some online listing sites allow guest reviews as part of the ‘contract’ you have with them as an advertiser. You cannot stop the review being posted, but you can post a ‘reply’ to the review, so that both are visible to potential guests. In some cases the guest need not have booked through this listing site – merely stayed at your property, however they found you.
Many owners – good owners, providing high quality accommodation and good service – don’t like this system and sometimes refuse to use the particular online listing sites that do this.
I agree. Free speech, the right to give ones honest opinion, and the power a genuinely poor review has to change the behaviour of the less honest owner is one thing, but these reviews can turn into a ‘lose-lose’ situation for responsible owners.
Firstly,. We’ve all experienced the need to badger guests, after they’ve gone home, to bother to go online and find your property, write the review and then respond to the verification email from the online listing site (to ensure they, as a reviewer, are genuine).
Whilst they may happily fill in your guest comment book whilst staying at your property in the flush of enjoying a great holiday, doing it some 3 weeks later is much less likely.
Secondly, what’s ‘excellent’ to one guest is merely ‘good’ to the next. Holidays are very personal experiences and it’s impossible to be consistent without some sort of agreed benchmark – and one doesn’t exist.
Thirdly, I’m totally unconvinced about how many potential guests are influenced by reviews. I wouldn’t be, as they are personal, too easily exaggerated, and too easily abused.
So who bothers to write reviews? Well, some of your happy guests might, but for sure a higher percentage of guests who didn’t like your property will – but guests who want to damage your business (perhaps to wrest some compensation from you) almost certainly will - and there is little you can do about it.
The online listing site can’t determine the veracity or otherwise of any negative claims, so you can become a hostage to fortune.
Years of good work and great service can be damaged by one really bad review from a guest who is only using the process to try to harm you.
There are guests (most of us have, unfortunately, experienced them) who make a habit of enjoying a holiday but afterwards creating a false situation or exaggerated complaint to try to get some money back. They may be only 1 in a 1000, but nevertheless, they do exist.
They can use the review system to pressure you into meeting their demands.
There’s little you can do. If you get such a review the online listing site will probably not put up the negative review if they believe (and have proof) it is part of a process to threaten and/or blackmail you. Other than that, you can try to argue that you are the sites paying customer, but that probably won’t carry much weight. I know a few owners who have, in protest, removed their listings from these sites but if the site is providing a good proportion of your enquiries, that’s a difficult (and brave) decision.
If the negative review is posted, reply to it. Don’t express anger. Be factual. Reply as if you are talking to future guests, not the reviewing guest. Be careful about responding point – by – point, and blow – by – blow, it doesn’t read well. The best approach is simply to highlight the positives from the comments of all your other guests – especially if you can truthfully point out comments from other guests
that counter exactly the same negative points of the complaining guest.
Lesen Sie mehr hierzu auf: http://www.alwaysfullybooked.com
