Thank Your Positive Reviewers - It’s Good For Business

Positive reviews of your property on social media are great, aren’t they? Sure are, but don’t simply bask in the glory. There’s an art to getting maximum benefit from positive reviews.

The first thing to do is to record the contact information for a guest who leaves a positive review. Thank them personally. As much as they liked your property to go through the effort of writing a positive review, you can cement their goodwill by noticing and thanking them for their kind words and personally inviting them back.

Reinvate has a good quick rundown of the appropriate Thank You Sandwich Formula to use: Thank them by name, personalize it somehow - “Sorry there was so much rain when you were here, hopefully it’ll be sunnier next time!” - thank the guest again and invite for a return visit.

It’s not only a nice thing to do, it’s good hotel business: According to the results of a 2016 study by Cornell University, there’s a measurable, positive correlation “between response rates and bookings revenue. That is, hotels that respond to reviews up to a 40-45% response rate may see up to a 2.2x lift in bookings revenue, as compared to hotels that don’t respond to reviews at all.”

And that’s just responding to under half of all reviews.

One word of warning: If you’re going to take the time and effort to thank guests who leave positive reviews, don’t sabotage things by using a cut and paste, impersonal template - “Management wishes to thank you for your positive comments about our hotel. We always strive to provide maximum satisfaction for every guest blah blah blah.” If you have a casual hotel write a casual note, but write something that reflects the fact that a human wrote it.