Showing posts with label online reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online reviews. Show all posts

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Travel review sites

When you mention to travel businesses, sites such as Trip Advisor, most small businesses haven't give too much thought about the review site - or if they have they have a negative perception.

One of the best things that any travel business can do is encourage feedback.

However if you intend to do nothing with the feedback then don't bother.

The reasons to seek feedback are:

  • Find out what things are working well
  • What things are not working well
  • Identify possible new services you could provide
  • Give you a good basis to assess how your are meeting your business expectations for service and quality.
What to do with feedback:
  • Collate it into a database
  • Look for the good points and bad points
  • If you have contact details for the feedback thank the guest for the feedback.
  • If the guest provides negative feedback acknowledge this, thank them for the information and that you intend to fix the issue. 
  • If you promise to fix the issue make sure you do!
Should you encourage feedback on online forums:

YES

Simply put you want to encourage feedback on the various online forums as the more feedback the better. Ideally you want to encourage guests to comment to you directly on any negative issues and to put their general feedback on line. If you do get negative criticism on a website, review the comments and if you are able feel free to add a comment. Just don't be defensive, rather be open and if there is a real issue acknowledge and state what you are doing to fix it.

If you want assistance on managing review sites why not contact us as we can assist you with a full audit of your web presence and give you some simple tools on how to manage your wider web presence.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Online Reviews

A recent blog about online reviews is worth a read - "More Support for Truth being Online Gold Dust on the Travel & Tourism Technology blog

The most interesting suggestion was the following:
I would like to see a comment card at a hotel that says "How are we doing? Let us know by writing a review at TripAdvisor.com". Wow, how forward thinking would that be.
Hopefully you already know about TripAdvisor.com but his suggestion to encourage reviews is an excellent idea.

There are a number of reasons to encourage reviews and provide a link to these reviews within your website:
  • It shows a commitment to maintaining the quality of your product
  • Encourages positive reviews
  • Identifies areas which require improvement
  • Any negative posts can be responded online
  • This makes the process of reviews very transparent
  • The reviews are seen as independent.
So what do you think?

Let us know if you have a link to trip advisor on your website?

We are investigating introducing a review process on RainbowTourism.com and would like you thoughts on this as well.