Why It's Important To Manage Online Reputation For Your Hotel

What's in it for me?

A simple and straightforward guide on "why to manage online reputation for your hotel!" Here you'll learn the importance of ORM (if that's what you've been keeping on hold using pandemic as an excuse), the impact of reviews on your hotel's online reputation as well as the plethora of benefits that follow with managing your online image consistently across all the vital platforms! 

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All amazing things in the world need maintenance!

Bought a Lamborghini? Maintain it!
In a relationship with someone? Maintain it!
Spent a lot on coloring your hair recently? Maintain it!
Enjoying a success streak at work? Maintain it!

Running a Hotel Business? Manage it!
Running a hotel is a difficult endeavor!
There’s a wide range of responsibilities ranging from providing top-notch customer service, cleaning, maintenance, and taking care of customers’ needs to managing online reputation. Creating and maintaining a successful brand image is the need of the hour!

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A positive online reputation is quintessential for firms to survive and be successful in this competitive market. For the majority of the consumers, your virtual presence and reputation act as a catalyst while booking!

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Even though hotels are physical, their reputation and image are digital. Hence having strategies to protect the online reputation for hotels is significant.

Consequently, one of the best possible ways to manage online reputation is having an effective management strategy to deal with online reviews.

→ 81% of people frequently or always read reviews before booking a hotel.
→ 52% of individuals would never book a hotel that has zero reviews.

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Moreover, your perception among travelers is directly correlated to your financial performance and revenue management. Therefore, managing online reputation has become an integral part of the modern-day hospitality industry.

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What Is Hotel Reputation Management?

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Online Reputation Management in hotel’s terminology is:

...the phenomenon of influencing and monitoring the perception of your hotel in the virtual domain. It usually involves a host of activities that can be considered important for the holistic management of hotel reputation. In other words, this can be regarded as first managing the organizational online reputation including its ratings, reviews, or just mere mentions that can be both negative and positive in the virtual domain.

Once, you have an idea regarding how your brand is being portrayed online, you can assess the impact it has on your business and develop strategies to manage online reputation.

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Importance Of Reputation Management For Hotels

95% of the travelers blatantly accept that reviews influence their booking decisions!

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And that is true!

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How travelers perceive, search, rate, review, and share information about your hotel directly affects the success of your hotel. Online reputation has become immensely important for hotels and organizations related to hospitality as online customer reviews are directly correlated to demand.

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Customers will value guest ratings over a hotel’s brand 72% of the time.

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These days, “word of mouth,” can come from outside a consumer’s social circle, with an online review creating a ripple-like effect!

It has become significantly important for hoteliers to manage online reputation as it helps deal with the most important aspect of the current times - having a positive reputation!

However, not every hospitality institution can optimally utilize this aspect of the travel market. The online travel bookings already hold a market share of 63% of the $1.2 trillion the travel industry generates every year and is expected to grow further.

Therefore, successful management of online reputation is immensely important as it provides enormous business opportunities. Since the online travel market has boomed significantly over the past few years due to COVID-19, it can be assumed that the ongoing worldwide pandemic will only increase the growth over the coming years. This presents a unique opportunity for hotels to invest resources in this particular domain to build a strong foundation now. This can help reap dividends in the future.

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Importance Of Reputation Management For Hotels

In the current business scenario, online marketing, social networks, and websites are regarded to be a quintessential part of helping to manage online reputation. This has led to the blurring of lines between online reputation and reputation in real life.

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This is true for almost all forms of businesses that exist in the current market scenario including the hospitality industry!

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Travelers nowadays rely on online reviews much more than consumer-centric online marketing.

OTAs are booking platforms flooded every day with reviews. These reviews have a huge influence on people’s booking decisions. Therefore, needless to say, it is important to manage online reputation better on these sources if you wish to witness a surge in the number of bookings in your establishment. Moreover, effective hotel reputation management can help you obtain a competitive advantage in terms of revenue management.

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How Does Hotel Reputation Impact The Revenue?

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It is important to have strategies in place to deal with the management of online reputation for your hotel. A recent TripAdvisor study found that, given the option between two otherwise identical properties, 79% of users will choose the one with the higher rating!

The more reviews a hotel receives and more the popularity of the hotel appears to be, its ratings are more trusted. Even if there are certain negative or bad reviews in the mix, it will only constitute a minority fraction compared to the large volume of positive ones.

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With these factors in place, online reputation can help boost your room sales and hotel revenue:

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• An optimized website offering a flawless booking experience
• A captivating content depicting your property the most authentic way
• High engagement on social media platforms
• A well-trained staff, responsive to the needs of the guests
• Lots of opportunities for upselling and personalization of stay
• A stellar guest experience

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Benefits Of Hotel Reputation Management

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It is important to remember that reputation can be changed over time. Just like reputation can be tarnished, it can also be repaired for you to reap the benefits of having a positive online reputation.
Listed below are a few of its benefits:

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Manage Online Reputation: Key Benefits

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1. It helps in increasing sales Before visiting a place, people rely on online reviews. Properties with good online reviews tend to attract more people.
Properties with a bad reputation and the maximum number of negative reviews miss out on big sales. That’s why your brand needs to have positive reviews on online platforms.

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2. It helps build credibility

Social media platforms have allowed us to give an opinion about everything. People prefer to use brands that they trust. A negative word about your brand will spread faster than a positive one.
Again, no opinion at all on your business is a sign of unreliability and trust issues. But having an effective ORM strategy and addressing it right in time will help tackle that.
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3. It helps attract employeesSomebody once asked us, “Do you think hospitality of the staff is important for a hotel's reputation?”

Well, reviews not only attract customers but it is equally important in attracting employees. Having professional staff is the foundation for a successful workforce. A good online reputation drives applications in high volume for any job openings. This equally stands true for the hospitality industry!

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4. It helps increase visibility

Online reviews, especially positive reviews, can give businesses plenty of opportunities to increase exposure and influence prospects. Paying attention to online reviews is not only essential in managing your hotel reputation but also in growing your business.

Positive reviews help in increasing the visibility of the brand. They also help in attracting more customers. Although more traffic does not necessarily translate to more room bookings, it does increase the probability of increasing occupancy of your hotel rooms.
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5. It helps maximize your hotel revenue

In the current highly competitive market and business environment, the way your brand is being perceived by people has a direct impact on the sales and revenue of your organization.

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Thus, your hotel reputation helps in maximizing revenue while simultaneously creating a good reputation.

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Conclusion

The hospitality industry in the previous and the current year is primarily dominated by the impact of the pandemic. The current situation has further projected the significance of online hotel reviews and the amount of popularity it stands to enjoy presently. It remains a vital source of collecting information about an institution and for travelers to share their experiences. People usually rely more on online reviews than establishments who often spend a fortune on marketing themselves and improving their brand image. 

Thus, there is a pressing need to manage online reputation. This is an ongoing process! Stopping here will risk you being left far behind in this tough competition. Thankfully, we have a plethora of tools and hotel review management software to automate the task and free ourselves from the burden of micromanagement:

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With GuestTouch, Create A Strong Online Presence With 5x More Reviews And A Hardcore Guest Engagement Strategy!

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What Do We Offer?

1. Manage all your reviews in a single dashboard…

Automatically collect fresh reviews, and get a pulse on all reviews across different sites like Google, Booking.com, Hostelworld, Expedia, TripAdvisor, and more- all in one place in a single dashboard!

2. Get more reviews, increase your ranking by making it simpler for your guests to leave you a review...

There are many barriers to writing a review- search the right platform, search the right property, find the review link, log in or sign up, etc, With GuestTouch, writing a review becomes as simple as click and leave a review.

3. Personalize responses to your guest reviews...

Draft compelling responses to each review with the help of our expert team and algorithmic prompts to make sure your property is perceived great.

4. Strategic management reports that keep you ahead of the curve

Our simple-to-understand custom reports and comprehensive data enables hotels to leverage key insights to market their property the correct way to manage online reputation accurately.

And so much more...

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