In these days of TripAdvisor, Yelp and other social media outlets, you as a hotelier have less control than ever before over your brand.

It used to be that your advertising pretty much set the public perception of your property. Nowadays when someone Googles your hotel, they’re as likely to head to a review site as they are to your official site. And they’re more likely to trust the review site over your own word for the quality of your hotel.

So, it’s important to manage your reputation online. In previous articles we’ve explained why it’s a good idea to reach out and thank positive reviewers and the best way to respond to negative reviews online so you not only minimise the effects of negative publicity but actually present your property in a positive light.

Depending on the size of your property and the business you do, a hotel-focused Reputation Management tool could be a wise investment.

This is partly because online reviews are so important. Hotels are greatly affected by reviews – or the lack of them. According to TripAdvisor officials, “93% of the people use online reviews when determining which hotel they want to stay at” and “53% of the people surveyed would not book a hotel that didn’t have online reviews.”

Reputation Management tools automatically send emails to guests to ask them to post reviews on certain review sites and monitor the reviews for positive and negative sentiments. They generally try to keep most reviews on the most important sites and generate reports letting you know how your online reputation’s doing.

They track things like Guest Satisfaction Indexes and other metrics to “aggregate, organize, and score review data from across the web.” So if that sounds like something you might need, there are plenty of companies eager to help you.