Stay updated on the latest Guest Experience and Hospitality Tech updates.
Struggling to rank on TripAdvisor but not sure what you’re doing wrong?
TripAdvisor is one of the most popular travel review websites on the web with 167.1 million visits in May 2022 alone.
But if you’re not consistently getting great reviews, you might be scaring away potential guests. Not to worry—this article is here to fix just that. We’re going to cover:
Ready to get more five-star reviews? Keep reading.
How does TripAdvisor’s ranking system work? Well, the exact algorithms are a company secret, but on their website, they do give some helpful information. First of all, there are two types of ranking on TripAdvisor:
One common thread runs through both of these ranking systems: the quality, quantity, and age of your reviews. That means short reviews and older reviews carry less weight than lengthy or newer reviews.
Unlike other online booking platforms, TripAdvisor’s indexes are completely organic—no paid or premium results influence them.
Next up are 5 strategies any hotel business can adopt to dominate the TripAdvisor leaderboard, encourage higher occupancy, and drive more revenue.
Let’s get right to it.
When your guests have a good time, they leave good reviews—it’s as simple as that.
Your job is to make sure that they do have a good time. One way to do this is via guest personalization–if you take the time to learn about your guest’s profiles you can tailor your service to their needs and improve the quality of their stay.
Example: After diving into customer data you see that you get a lot of business guests. Why not highlight conference room availability or local co-working spaces that they might be interested in?
If COVID-19 regulations mean the breakfast buffet is closed, guests should know that before they check in, not when they’re hungry at 7 AM in a new city.
By pre-empting any problems as quickly as possible via your guests’ preferred communication channels — email, WhatsApp, your hotel app — guests will be more understanding and feel cared for, even if things go wrong.
Make sure your staff are trained in clear and open communication. If not, your guests will vent their frustration in their TripAdvisor reviews.
Learn More: 7 Tips For Better Guest Communication
Keeping guests happy when you’re short-staffed can be frustrating.
Investing in hotel technology can lighten your staff’s burden and free them up to provide better service, which of course, leads to better TripAdvisor reviews.
Example: It’s often said in the hotel industry that you have about 20-minutes of face-to-face interaction with guests in any stay. That’s all the time you have to give a good impression.
Most of that time is taken up by monotonous admin; passport photocopying, processing payments, etc. All tasks that can be easily performed by hotel technology—freeing up your staff to personalize their service and provide a better level of hospitality.
But beware—there is a wrong way to implement tech into your hotel business.
Always remind guests to leave reviews. Guests who had great stays often forget to leave reviews, while those who had a less pleasant experience will not—and that can present a distorted view of your hotel on TripAdvisor.
Send a post-booking survey to all your guests reminding them to leave a review.
Make sure to:
The worst thing you can do about a bad review is to ignore it. That signals to prospective guests that your hotel isn’t interested in addressing guest problems and doesn’t care about hospitality as much as they should.
You might not be able to make things right with the guest themselves, but you can send a powerful signal to prospective guests that hospitality is something you take seriously.
CMO at Duve
We won’t name and shame any hotels with specific examples here—just check out TripAdvisor hotel reviews in your area and you can see for yourselves how hotels tackle this problem with varying levels of success.
Avoid generic copy and paste responses—your reply must be soothing, address the specific complaint and let people know what steps your hotel is taking to improve while bearing in mind future guests that will be reading this reply.
The best way to improve your TripAdvisor is to improve the quality of your guest’s stay. And the best way to do that is to allow your staff to focus their energy on hospitality, problem-solving, and clear communication.
In the fight against negative customer reviews, hotel technology is your secret weapon. It makes implementing all of the above tips that much easier.
Duve has been helping hoteliers drive up guest satisfaction and occupancy rates for years. We’re not just a tech partner—we’re a tech partner that understands the hotel industry and has skin in the game.
Curious about improving your hotel rankings but want some bespoke advice for your specific situation? Our customer success team is on hand and ready to walk you through what exactly Duve can do for you.
Let us show you how Duve can boost your TripAdvisor rankings today.
