How To Increase Your HolidayCheck Hotel Reviews

What's in it for me?

Getting an influx of consistently-flowing reviews on HolidayCheck- the highest reach holiday platform in the German-speaking area is something that most properties strive for. In this post, we aim to optimize your existing review management strategy to enable you to collect more reviews and streamline the whole process of managing those reviews in one place to better encourage your guests to provide you feedback on various online platforms.

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“Clear feedback is the cornerstone of improvement” - Sir David Brailsford

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Reviews are indeed a mechanism to improve any establishment, including the hospitality industry. Making the process of addressing reviews and working on the feedback definitely improves the overall functioning of the establishment. Since reviews are directly provided by the guests and are usually out there on various platforms for all to see, it leaves an instant impression on the minds of the travelers. Hence both obtaining and managing reviews is an integral part of any business. Keeping the above in mind, HolidayCheck is one such platform that operates as a one-stop solution to make travel holiday experiences better with over 10 million verified HolidayCheck hotel reviews, user photos, and videos. Housing over 1.4 million hotels under its wings, the booking and rating portal offers extensive travel-related know-how to potential travelers. However, prior to deep-diving into the world of reviews, let’s increase our knowledge about HolidayCheck a little.

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HolidayCheck: A Brief Introduction

The idea of HolidayCheck was conceptualized back in 1999. They are a booking and rating portal continuously catering to the needs of both the travelers and hoteliers, thereby operating as the highest reach holiday platform in the German-speaking areas. The booking and rating portal provides a personalized experience to each user driven by transparency, quality, and innovation. Thanks to the tripartite combination of 10 million hotel reviews, the community knowledge in the form of a travel forum with over 3.3 million members and HolidayCheck online magazine Away, the expertise gained by their own travel agency with around 150 travel experts, and offers from 75 tour operators and other tourism service providers. Since 2021 there also have been suitable rental car offers from HolidayCheck Car Rental on the platform. HolidayCheck AG is a subsidiary of HolidayCheck Group, founded in 2003.

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Why HolidayCheck?

HolidayCheck primarily operates as a booking and rating portal that basically provides every potential traveler and vacationer with a seamless experience during the pre-booking and booking phases. It aims to reduce the time usually invested by travelers while researching for the perfect hotel in their dream destinations. Review Management is one of the strongest and core competencies of HolidayCheck. The ever-growing database of hotel ratings and HolidayCheck hotel reviews helps holidaymakers obtain valuable and comprehensive information prior to booking the perfect hotel stay. Every incoming feedback goes through extensive checking or review process, in order to ensure the authenticity of the reviews. In order to fight against the menace of fake reviews, they launched an important initiative named, “Together against fake reviews” in 2021.

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What is the HolidayCheck Review-Tool?

Review-Tool is a service provided by the platform to help hoteliers make the process of review management a free-flowing, hassle-free, and more personalized one. Features like flexibility and ease of use along with it being free are some of the advantages. As a user, one simply needs to open the tool and enter their email-id and they are good to go. Once a user has entered the portal, they can narrate the experience of their stay in the form of a review. The Review-Tool is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant and follows the latest regulation guidelines. Hence, it is safe for anyone to use. However, one must ensure that only the email ID of the user is used. After the stay, the guests receive an email that looks somewhat like this:

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A Quick Summary of the Review-Tool Advantages

Review-Tool is an exclusive feature of HolidayCheck hotel reviews which is basically aimed at easing the review collection process for the hoteliers. Some of its advantages are as follows:

• It's a one-stop solution for guests and hoteliers alike
• It helps holidaymakers select and book hotels easily
• It helps in saving time and effort
• It helps travelers make improved and knowledgable decisions
• It promotes transparency
• It is more a process of seeking guests’ opinions
• It builds credibility owing to its increased transparency
• It makes the process of collecting reviews easier
• Its GDPR compliance leads to increased safety and security
• It helps in addressing  the menace of fake reviews
• It helps in promoting a contactless review management process.
• It Improves the overall experience

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Reviews Are Significant - Why?

Reviews being one of the core parameters of the decision-making process of the holidaymakers while selecting and booking a hotel, its significance is paramount. Over the last few years, online reviews have become an essential and integral part of every stakeholder associated with the gigantic and ever-growing virtual world. 

The online HolidayCheck hotel reviews are reliable due to them being a first-hand account of the people who have already stayed in the hotel. The experience might vary from person to person. But it can be easily deciphered by users based on the volume of reviews they go through. Oftentimes, these online hotel reviews are the only source of information that the guests might have. Hence, they have the potential to cast a huge influence.

93% of customers read online reviews before availing of a service.

Moreover, it also provides a level playing field to countless hotels that might not have the financial might or strength to match their larger counterparts. However, thanks to products or services such as Review-Tool, they can easily survive and prosper in the cut-throat hospitality business through sheer hard work, dedication, and smart decisions. This tool sends a reminder to the users after 7 days to summarize their recent stay in the form of feedback. It's the duty of the guests and travelers to provide a review that might influence and help fellow holidaymakers to make better decisions.

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Why Is There A Need To Increase HolidayCheck Hotel Reviews

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Having a positive online reputation not only impacts your brand image on platforms like HolidayCheck but also helps improve the brand’s overall image and reach. This, in turn, increases the possibility to get more hotel reviews. Regardless to say, the potential for securing a booking amplifies significantly as your hotel has a positive brand image and the majority of the (positive) online hotel reviews depict a positive story. 

Having a proper and effective strategy to manage online reviews has a huge impact on your business’s future prospects. Your online reputation is usually influenced by multiple factors such as the nature of your business, content quality, visibility, and customer service among others. A large part of improving hotel reputation depends on the effective management of hotel reviews. This can be easily and effectively done with the help of HolidayCheck, which operates as a booking and rating platform, catering effectively to the needs of thousands of hoteliers and holidaymakers.

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Ways To Increase Your Online Reviews On HolidayCheck

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Reviews can be regarded as an asset to your business. They are a true reflection of your efforts as an organization and depict the state of your business. Depending upon their experience, the hotel guests either provide a positive or negative review. Having more positive reviews is hugely beneficial as it helps your property get noticed along with having a higher position or ranking in the search results. This also helps in providing the modern-era travelers with suitable property options as per their preferences.

While positive reviews are what hoteliers work for and seek, negative reviews can be pivotal in deciding the fate of your organization. It’s the negative reviews that help in highlighting the persistent issues that require immediate attention and at times instant action. Instead of staying away from negative reviews, it’s better to adopt a hands-on approach along with a combination of thorough planning and effective strategy regarding review management. 

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That being said, here are some of the ways in which you can gather more HolidayCheck hotel reviews  for your property:

1. Cut the mustard by providing a top-shelf stay

Nothing can beat the power of true hospitality. Strengthening your SOPs and encouraging staff to go above and beyond in being responsive to the guests’ needs by providing a stay replete with fully functional (even if not top-notch) amenities connote providing an enhanced guest experience. Again, this tradition or practice should be implemented uniformly at every stage of the guest journey- pre-arrival, on-arrival, mid-stay, departure, and post-departure. Guests will surely remember that and this, in turn, will help generate more reviews.

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2. Enhance your communication technology to engage with guests better

With contactless hospitality becoming the latest norm, it is imperative to include optimized and high-functioning communication tools in your tech stack for seamless guest communication. While service requests and mid-stay recovery can be made possible through tools like guest messaging, review links can also be shared, enabling even your German-speaking guests to leave you a review on HolidayCheck as Guest Messaging does help remove language barriers for unhindered communication with guests of other nationalities.

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3. Follow-up with your guests post departure

Following up on HolidayCheck hotel reviews to be received from the guests, especially at the right time is the key to increasing your ratings and reviews on HolidayCheck. While your staff can subtly (or even directly) throw hints regarding review submission during check-out, it’s only wise to follow up a few days after the guests have returned from their travels to remind them once again in a humble way to drop in a quick review. But be cautious not to overwhelm them with repeated reminders and too much link-sending.

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4. Train your staff to grab quick feedback face-to-face

While feedback could be verbal, it’s important to convert it into an online review. Your staff can ease the process with adequate training to encourage guests to leave a review on HolidayCheck by asking in a straightforward, polite manner or guiding them through the process step-by-step. That does not mean you should offer incentives in exchange. But a polite, gentle reminder can go a long way in helping guests understand the emotional value that hotels generally attach to the review collection process.

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5. Compile a ‘Welcome Pack’ for the Guests

Another way of making the review writing process easier for the guests is to present a booklet or brochure to them on their arrival which gives out all the details about your property including the facilities, timings for using them, house rules and tips about local restaurants and attractions. But remember to make this digital concierge or micro page short and sweet as guests would not have all the time on earth to go through it all. Make sure you also include the review link or review process which makes it easier for them and reminds them to share their feedback.

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6. Ask Guests in Multiple Languages

A simple mistake made by hotels when trying to churn out online HolidayCheck hotel reviews is only contacting guests in their spoken language. In reality, most hotels have guests from all over the world and it is only significant to ensure that their opinions are heard too. Sending your review links via emails or SMS and ask for feedback in multiple languages indicate that you’re not leaving out any of your foreign language-speaking customers.

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7. Use the free advertising media by HolidayCheck

Integrate the "LEAVE A REVIEW FOR US AT HOLIDAYCHECK"-SIGNATURE into your emails to remind your guests of the reviews without coming across as too clingy or overwhelming. Optionally, you may link directly to the review section for your hotel on HolidayCheck.

For more information, please go through the updated HolidayCheck Code of Conduct for hoteliers in terms of review management.

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Other Ways Of Seeking And Increasing More HolidayCheck Hotel Reviews

• Use an after-travel email communication system
• Use review cards on invoice notes as reminders for review-submission
• Respond to all the reviews on HolidayCheck- positive, negative, or mixed on time to build more credibility with the prospects or travelers still in an indecisive stage regarding writing a review
• Respond politely to even the most negative reviews
• Manage all your reviews in a single dashboard
• Let people know about your existence on HolidayCheck by increasing your visibility through emails and review links/tools

A Word Of Caution: “HolidayCheck is a German language platform. In order to be understood by all users, only German reviews are published. Therefore, the Review Tool is only available in German. In the Business Center, you can have the reviews of your guests translated so that you can understand them.”        

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Conclusion

The hospitality industry is a customer-oriented one, and hence it primarily depends on customer feedback to survive and thrive. While at times, the authenticity of reviews is in doubt, recent changes made to the Code of Conduct revolving around the HolidayCheck hotel reviews restrict guests from submitting reviews while at the hotel premises. This helps in promoting transparency that leads to increased trust by the potential guests and holidaymakers, making their vacation a memorable one.

HolidayCheck is one such organization that primarily operates as a booking and rating platform, aimed at catering to the needs of both the hoteliers and holidaymakers. On one hand, they provide assistance to the guests by finding and booking a suitable place for them to stay. On the other hand, they also help the hoteliers in the tedious process of collecting reviews with exclusive products and services such as Review-Tool and with some of the best practices mentioned above.

Hence make it a point to make your guests know about your presence on HolidayCheck and gather more reviews for building a solid online presence.

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We Are Happy To Announce Our Integration With HolidayCheck To Drive Reviews And Manage Them Seamlessly In A Single Dashboard.

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GuestTouch x HolidayCheck Integration: Takeaway

• Streamline the hotel guest experience at various stages of the guest journey
• Allow hotels and travel portals to maximize their potential to create dazzling reputation management and review collection game plan with cutting-edge technology.
• Strengthen your whole review management strategy
• Instill confidence in travelers researching their next stay.

Find out more about this integration here!

Our Free Demo Has All Kinds of Reputation/Review Management Solutions For Your Property