With the growth of online spaces populated by user-generated content, word of mouth is increasingly becoming digitised, and reviews that are shared with online communities often even overshadow the recommendations that are passed on in person.
But while it’s easy to understand your guests voicing their opinions to friends and family, understanding why guests choose to post reviews online for the world to see isn’t quite as simple. Why do individuals involve themselves in the decision making processes of others, for example? Are reviewers posting to help their communities, or for their own gain?
Why is it important to know what inspires guests to leave reviews?
In the hospitality industry, it’s vital to know as much about your guests as you can, whether you use this knowledge to provide a personalised experience at your property, to help you market to potential future guests, or simply to enhance your guest experience in general. But understanding why guests leave reviews is valuable in other ways as well.
By garnering insights into your guests’ frame of mind when they are leaving reviews, you can ensure that they are in the right frame of mind when they leave your property, encouraging them to review you. Better still, if you can understand why it is that guests leave negative reviews, you have an opportunity to sense a negative review before it comes. This way you can either resolve it in a positive way to ensure that the guest doesn’t leave dissatisfied, or provide alternative methods for that guest to voice their displeasure that don’t wind up on the world wide web.
Who can you expect to see reviews from?
One place to start when determining what might be motivating your guests to leave reviews is to figure out which of your guests would be most likely to leave them. You may feel, for example, that as a property that caters to luxury clientele, your guests are less likely to revert to online methods to sing your praises or point out small grievances, or that since your guests are older, they won’t be leaving you online reviews. But you may be surprised.
