How to Respond to TripAdvisor Hotel Reviews (Visual Guide & Tips)

(ARTICLE UPDATED in June, 2022)
Editor's Note: Originally published in October 2019, this post has been completely updated and refurbished for comprehensiveness, accuracy and relevance.

Respond to TripAdvisor Hotel Reviews: Introduction

Reviews play an instrumental role in the upkeep of a hotel’s reputation online. Be it a hotel or any other business, customer feedback is of vital importance. Again, the way a hotel responds to its reviews speaks volumes about its overall status and reputation. Thankfully, there is a great list of sites that allow hoteliers to respond to the user reviews or traveler reviews regarding the stay at their property.

Responding to reviews entails two goals- the first goal is to lend a listening ear to your hotel guests and the second is to let them know your side of the story, too.  

Be it positive or negative, good or bad, every review needs a response, and the hotel management response to the reviews carries extreme significance. When you respond to your reviews, it makes it clear to those reading it that you care about what your customers have to say about your service. Guess what?

77% of Travelers More Likely to Book When Business Owners Respond to Reviews...

Things You Are In For

This is the power of a hotel review reply! While positive reviews should be welcomed with jubilation and gratefulness, hotel bad reviews should be handled with utmost care. It is because the bad reviews for hotels are synonymous with a black spot on their overall reputation online.

Consequently, hotel reviews reply is a pressing need, and your staff or third-party should be well-trained to handle these comments, as and when they’re thrown at you!

While a bad review hotel is a big put off, hotels with no reviews are equally a let-down. Again, it is of no good to collect these reviews if you’re not going to respond to TripAdvisor hotel reviews.

This can have a direct impact on your bookings and can go a long way in enabling people to gauge your overall professionalism and attentiveness towards guest problems, mostly on the negative side of the scale. In short, it becomes a yardstick for measuring your overall attitude towards the guests.

With 859 million reviews and opinions from travelers, the giant TripAdvisor Inc. demands hotels and businesses to respond to Tripadvisor reviews.

Reviewing on Tripadvisor is a common practice and a lot of travelers take to this platform to vent their emotions regarding their travel experience and overall stay. Hence Tripadvisor review responses are extremely crucial for your hotel business and customer service.

Ever wondered why these little Tripadvisor comments are so important? It is because:

4 out of 5 TripAdvisor users believe that hotels that respond to reviews care more about their guests...

Tripadvisor management team enables businesses to provide well-crafted TripAdvisor responses to the user reviews. Adding management responses to TripAdvisor travel reviews is a requisite and should not go amiss by the hospitality industry.

A lot of our clients seem to be going through a whirlwind of questions- “how to handle bad Tripadvisor reviews?” “how to respond to a positive review on Tripadvisor?” “as an owner or manager, how do I respond to a review on my listing?” etc. To respond to Tripadvisor reviews (negative and positive) there surely are a few special tips which we will discuss later on in this article. But let us first tackle the most basic question, “how to respond to Tripadvisor reviews'' on your hotel!

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TripAdvisor-the Name Sounds Familiar, Right?

This American travel and hotel website company is a great platform to post management responses. Being the world’s largest travel platform, TripAdvisor also allows public responses.

Not only this, but it also allows you to send a private message to the author of the review which, in turn, will only be sent directly to the review contributor. This is extremely helpful in winning the trust of the customers as it helps them feel that the hotel actually cares about their feedback and experience.

Thus from the point of view of service recovery, to respond to Tripadvisor hotel reviews is one of the excellent ways to boost your hotel’s online reputation.

It is quite easy to respond to the hotel reviews on TripAdvisor. Here, we have illustrated a sequenced procedure with step-by-step images that will show you how to respond accurately and flawlessly to the guest reviews on TripAdvisor in a few simple steps.

Here We Go....

1. Before beginning with the actual TripAdvisor review response process, you are first required to register as an owner on TripAdvisor by claiming your free listing.You can only respond to the reviews after claiming your free listing (see the image below). In case if you haven’t, now is the time to do it.

2. Once you have claimed your listing, the next step is to log into the Management Centre. This can be done by using your login credentials.

3. After logging into the Management Centre, you can start responding to the reviews right away. However, there are two ways of doing so. You can pick whatever comes across as convenient to you:

a. You can click on ‘Respond to Reviews' button (see the image below) which is to the extreme left beside the ‘Promote Your Property’ option.

TripAdvisor Review Response Step 3(a)

OR

b. You can click on the 'Reviews' tab on the top (5th option) and next to the 'Marketing Tools' tab (see the image below). Clicking on the 'Reviews' will give a few options in the dropdown of which you will have to select 'Respond to Reviews' (1st Option).

TripAdvisor Review Response Step 3(b)

Respond to TripAdvisor Hotel Reviews: Procedure

4. Either of the steps will take you to the actual ‘Respond to reviews of (business)' page where you will be supposed to write your response in the empty white box (see the image below.) Since the page will show you all kinds of responses (no response, pending, rejected, published) you would badly need a filter to organize and order the ones which still await a response from your end. To access the filter, click on the ‘Filter Reviews’ button on the top (see the image below).

TripAdvisor Review Response Step 4

5. You can apply the desired filter. Let’s say if you have chosen the 'no response' filter, it will show you only those reviews for which the responses have not yet been submitted. Once you are done selecting the preferred filter, click on the 'Apply Filters' (see the image.) Remember, you can select multiple filters at a time. You just need to 'apply' them once you are done selecting.

TripAdvisor Review Response Step 5

6. After applying the desired filter, select a review to which you want to respond. The White box entitled 'Your response' which is right below the user review is where you need to fill in your response (see the image below). Compile and type your response. Remember to it keep it crisp, simple and professional. You can check out TripAdvisor's Management Response Guidelines for more information on drafting accurate responses.

After you have typed in your response within the box, choose the desired ‘business role’ (shown in the image) to indicate whether you are the manager, owner, general manager, to name a few on the list. Finally, click the ‘Submit’ button on the bottom right to respond to Tripadvisor hotel reviews.

TripAdvisor Review Response Step 6

Special Tips For You

○ Address the guest by his/her name to personalize the response

"79% of travelers Said Personalized Responses from Owners Make Reviews More Useful, Highlighting the Importance of Management Responses."

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○ Be it positive or negative, every review response on Tripadvisor should begin with a “thank you,” appreciating the guest for investing their precious time in drafting it.

"89% of Travelers Said a Thoughtful Response to a Negative Review Improved Their Impression of a Business, Showing the Effectiveness of Owners Responding to All Types of Reviews."

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○ Do not be too aggressive but at the same time, do not hold back in conveying your story with professionalism and politeness in the case of misunderstandings. Remember, politeness comes for free and does not cost you anything!

"84% of Travellers Said Polite and Respectful Response from Business Owners is Important to Them When Reading Reviews, and as a result, They Plan a Better Trip."

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○ Offer a solution to the concerns addressed. Be apologetic

"67% of respondents agreed that they find it helpful when they can see the context of negative reviews and apologies to guests from management."

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Facing the Real World: Respond to Tripadvisor Hotel Reviews

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Tripadvisor Positive Review Response Examples:

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Nice and clean
By: Olivia

Had a great time at the hotel! The staff was too kind to provide extra bedding for my 3-year-old daughter and the hot tub was just amazing. Enjoyed every moment here and am looking forward to returning soon!

Hotel's Response:

Dear Olivia,

Thank you very much for your encouraging comments on the various aspects of our service. To be held in such high regard by our customers is surely a dream come true for us and this is motivation enough for us to keep scaling greater heights. We're glad that our amenities and overall ambiance suited your needs. Do expect enhanced levels of commitment on every visit!

Best Regards
Customer Care Team
Arnold World Hotel

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Superb
By: Matthew

The staff at the check-in was immensely helpful. Convenient location.
The hotel made sure that the breakfast is served even by means of a grab-and-go system during COVID. Appreciate the effort! Will stay here again!

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Hotel's Response:

Dear Matthew,

Thank you for your stellar rating and review. We're extremely delighted to learn that you had a great stay and loved the overall experience. Positive comments like these, even during such unprecedented times, are a great boost to our overall functioning and morale. We thank you for appreciating all our earnest efforts. This proverbial pat for us is motivation enough to prod us to go forward and keep giving our best even in the face of adversity. Our staff would be equally pleased to learn of your high praise. Thank you for appreciating our location too. We are glad that you found it feasible. We’re sure that you had a great time visiting some of the must-see attractions nearby. It was surely an honor to earn your business and host you at our property. We'll strive to deliver such great experiences consistently. Please visit again!

Best Regards
Customer Care Team
Arnold World Hotel

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Facing the Real World: Respond to Tripadvisor Hotel Reviews

TripAdvisor Negative Review Response Examples:

Not coming back. Never!
By: Belinda

It was gross! The housekeeping needs to learn to do its job properly. Dust and hair everywhere. Never staying here again!

Hotel's Response:

Hi Belinda,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this thorough and insightful review. We appreciate that you've taken the time to share the ways in which we can improve our services. So, thank you for pointing out the issues with housekeeping so that we can work to improve upon this aspect of the guest experience at our hotel. Our housekeeping staff is held to a very high standard and we appreciate that you've informed us of a need to address housekeeping policies and procedures. We regret the inconvenience caused to you and we’re sorry that you had to go through this! Concrete steps will be taken in this regard to make sure that we’re all the more vigilant towards this in the future. We want you to experience the best value for your money, to feel comfortable, and to have your expectations exceeded; I hope that this will be the case during your next stay with us!

Best Regards
Customer Care Team
Arnold World Hotel

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Please spare me!
By: Sam

The location was good. Rest was a flop show!
Lots of noise, dirty, bad staff attitude. Not coming back again!

Hotel's Response:

Hi Sam,

Thank you for your valuable feedback. While we're glad that you liked the location, we're disappointed to learn that it was the solitary positive aspect of your entire stay. We're concerned after knowing that your stay with us did not match up to the quality that we strive to offer at all times. We apologize for all our shortcomings and we'll definitely pass your feedback to the teams responsible to ensure that there occurs no lapse in service the next time. We're equally disappointed to learn that our staff failed to leave a positive impression on you. Although this is unusual, we will definitely have a word with them to ensure that this does not happen again as we strongly condemn this and do not endorse or encourage any kind of negative behavior towards our guests. We beg your pardon and we request you to give us another chance to welcome you again for a perfect stay! We are sanguine that you shall notice the difference on your next visit!

Best Regards
Customer Care Team
Arnold World Hotel

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Final Takeaway

Be it good or bad, you cannot overlook the importance of a management review response on Tripadvisor. Hence the procedure of “How to respond to Tripadvisor hotel reviews” has been explained above with images at each and every step to make this seemingly Herculean task easy-peasy for you!

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There’s nothing that can prevent your business from excelling if you know the art of providing 100% personalized, and well-crafted management review responses to your hotel guest reviews. Good or bad, it’s important to address feedback from your guests online. Review responses are a chance to provide customer service to the guest and additional context to others reading the responses.

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