(Infographic) How to Get the TripAdvisor Certificate Of Excellence

The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.

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-Tom Peters

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Achieving excellence in business is almost every hotelier’s dream. Hence the competition to get ahead in the race and maintain a high popularity ranking on some of the leading OTA platforms! Whether you are a hotel or any other business, your reputation over the OTA is extremely important for your customers. One of the biggest players online is TripAdvisor. With over 570 million reviews and 490 million unique visitors, TripAdvisor dominates the search results and user ratings for over 7.3 million hotels, restaurants, and activities around the world, as per its top travel trend report (2017-18).

In fact, you will be surprised to know (if you didn’t know it yet) that TripAdvisor offers a Certificate of Excellence to honor hotels or hospitality businesses that deliver consistently exceptional services across the world. And what is amazing is that there is no application process for this certificate as it is based on merit and can be earned by the business over time!

Can You Elaborate Please?

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As evident from the information gathered from the TripAdvisor management centre, this platform has its own ways of felicitating or recognizing the top-rated properties:

a) The Traveler’s Choice: It is an award given out to the best in travel based on factors like quality, service and customer satisfaction.

b) The Certificate of Excellence: It is presented (since 2011) to around top 10% of the total businesses on TripAdvisor which have been able to secure for themselves consistently great traveler reviews over the past years.

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Both of these are the ways of acknowledging or recognizing the hard work put in by these businesses to provide customers with the ultimate satisfaction. Again, these reviews come straight from the users and are based purely on their experience.
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Do I Qualify For the Excellence Certificate?

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Any hospitality business such as the accommodations (Hotels, B&B / Inns, and Specialty Lodging), restaurants, attractions, and vacation rentals worldwide are eligible to receive a Certificate of Excellence. So if your business falls under any of these categories, you are already one step ahead in the game of achieving an Excellence Certificate from TripAdvisor.

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What is the Eligibility Criteria?

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Even if there is no set application process for securing the certificate, there are at least some guidelines and criteria which a business has to abide by in order to be qualified for the Certificate:

• It must have an overall bubble rating of at least four out of five on TripAdvisor.

• It must have a minimum number of reviews to qualify.

• Must have a listing period of at least 12 months on TripAdvisor. Certificate recipients are announced annually in late May.

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What Role Does TripAdvisor Play in this Regard?

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TripAdvisor has its own algorithm to shortlist the certificate recipients based on the user-generated content which takes into account the three main factors-quality, quantity and recency of the user reviews coupled with the business’s duration or tenure on the platform. Apart from that, it also looks at the content integrity issues, animal welfare policies, and/or fraudulent activity associated with the listing. Since the algorithm appears to be a bit of a proprietary issue, nothing much has been disclosed by TripAdvisor as far as the Eligibility Criteria for the Excellence Certificate is concerned.How Can You Receive the Certificate of Excellence?Since the main criteria rely heavily on the user-reviews and high-end ranking, encouragement to attain them both will be spectacular in helping you move towards your goal:

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For further information on how to use the text messaging effectively at every touchpoint for the enhanced guest experience, you can check this out.How Will I Know That My Business Has Achieved the Certificate?

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You will automatically receive a Certificate of Excellence Badge on your TripAdvisor Listing after being qualified. The site sends out the achievement details every year in late May, the notification for which you will be able to receive through the email.

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Few Facts That Will Bust All the Myths

• This achievement will not be rendered out on the basis of any commercial relations with the TripAdvisor.

• You can’t pay to get this certificate.

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Additional Information1) You might not be able to spot your TripAdvisor listing on the page if you do not qualify for the achievement next year. It is always updated to reflect the current recipients (for that year). In that case, the badge will be removed from your page.

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2) In order to check which other properties under you have qualified for the Certificate, you will have to manually check their page under your Management Centre. Similarly, for other businesses, you will have to check their pages separately as TripAdvisor does not really publish a full list of the recipients.

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Beware

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If at all you receive any call or message claiming that you have received an award from TripAdvisor, email contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com at once. This will prevent you from giving out any sensitive information to what is likely to be claimed as a scam.

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What’s New?

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The launch of the 2019 Certificate of Excellence campaign brought back the Hall of Fame program where the businesses having received the Excellence Certificate for five consecutive years have qualified.How to Claim My Excellence Certificate in Actual?

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You do have the option of getting the certificate printed. Here is the detailed procedure listed by TripAdvisor page for that:

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• Click on Order Form in the "Claim your Certificate and Sticker" section.

• On the order form page, select the year that you are looking for by clicking the dropdown box next to “Year,” which displays each year your business has qualified for a Certificate of Excellence.

•Fill out your shipping details and submit the Certificate of Excellence Request form.

• Your certificate will arrive in the mail within 8 weeks.

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Advantages of Winning This Recognition

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The Excellence Certificate comes with a lot of benefits:

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1) It conveys to the clients that you are a trustworthy business and they can walk up to you without any second thoughts. In fact, TripAdvisor reports that 75% of users are more likely to patronize a business with a TripAdvisor endorsement

2) It is a great boost to both your online and offline presence. Relevant Question/FAQ

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We feel that we meet the criteria but we have not received the certificate of excellence. What do we do?

If you believe that you meet the criteria to win the award, we suggest you reach out to TripAdvisor from your management center. This will help you seek more clarity about your position.

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Since reviews and ratings are essential in attaining the Excellence Certificate, it’s important for every hotelier to invest in a good reputation management tool. With GuestTouch, you can engage with your customers online at every touch-point to drive more bookings, create a positive impression and in turn get more reviews.

Need more information? We can help!