After being cooped up for nearly two years, many people are eager to travel again.
NB: This is an article from Travel Media Group
As a hotelier, you should take advantage of this renewed interest in travel by positioning your hotel within travelers’ sights. This requires a heavy focus on your online reputation and online presence in general. As more travelers make it their goal to travel to new places and have more experiences this year, hoteliers should prioritize focusing on improving their hotel’s reputation and expanding their digital presence.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and stay up to date
Traveler Resolutions
2022 is the year travelers are resolving to finally go on a vacation. Many feel like they need to make up for vacation time stolen by the pandemic. The number of people who feel the need to compensate for lost experiences has grown from 46% to 58%. With the number of people growing restless from cabin fever increasing, 72% are ready to dive headfirst into any vacation that fits their budget.
Reputation Resolutions
As a hotelier, what can you do? Understand the importance of your hotel’s reputation. The rating that travelers see is oftentimes the deciding factor in their booking decision. A low score on a review site, few reviews or not enough recent ones, and a bare social media presence doesn’t instill confidence in travelers about your property.
Therefore, when looking at the opportunity to improve a hotel’s reputation, review response and social media become important factors to focus on. Responding to reviews helps your reputation by showing guests you care about their feedback and providing updates or context to issues. Having a social media presence gives weight to your reputation by creating a platform. For travelers researching your property, it’s helpful to see what rooms look like or the types of events your hotel may host, and social media is the perfect place to showcase these details.
Setting Goals & Following Through
In order to make the necessary adjustments to improve your hotel’s reputation, you need to set goals. These goals should reflect the areas of your online reputation that need to be polished and should also be attainable and quantifiable. So, for example, if your hotel hasn’t been responding to reviews, set aside some time to respond, perhaps 10 minutes a day. Setting a schedule like this will allow you to check your progress and hold yourself accountable for a certain amount of work. In addition, if your hotel has a social media account that is barely active, hold yourself to the objective of posting 2-3 times a week.
A Comprehensive Reputation Plan
A lot goes into having and maintaining a good reputation. Hoteliers first and foremost need to be providing the best guest experience possible and not just meeting, but exceeding, guest expectations. In addition, reviews must be responded to regularly and social media must be updated actively.
