E-Reputation

This lesson will provide an overview of:

• Reviews via booking channel, eg Booking.com, Agoda, AirBnB as well as Google reviews
• Types of online review: verified vs unverified

At the end of this lesson you should be able to:

• Respond to critical review for your tourism business

Airbnb emails customers after their stay requesting them to leave a review.

Besides TripAdvisor, all of the major booking channels e.g. Booking.com,Agoda and Airbnb also allow visitors to review their experience. In addition, Google My Business/Maps is an important source of reviews.

What is common to all of these review sites is that businesses can't remove a negative review, however you can respond with your explanation of events. As mentioned previously, it is recommended that you respond to every negative review; not just for the sake of that customer, but more importantly, for the sake of future potential customers reading your reviews. A good response creates a good impression.

Although you as the business owner can't remove negative reviews, if you manage to resolve the customer's complaint amicably, you can ask the customer to update or remove their review.

Let's have a look at how each of these channels compare in their customer review process.

Verified reviews

Agoda, Booking.com and Airbnb only allow reviews from their own customers who have booked and stayed at the property or participated in a booked tour experience. These are called -verified reviews' and offer more trustworthy and valuable reviews for both the tourism business and other travellers than sites who allow anyone to write reviews i.e. unverified.

This is how Booking.com explains their process:

• It starts with a booking The only way to leave a review is to first make a booking. That's how we know our reviews come from real guests who have stayed at the property.
• Followed by a trip When guests stay at the property they check out how quiet the room is, how friendly the staff are and more.
• And finally, a review After their trip, guests tell us about their stay. We check for naughty words and verify the authenticity of all guest reviews before adding them to our site.

Review of guests

Airbnb and Agoda (via the app) take the review process a step further: they allow tourism businesses to review their guests and have this displayed publicly. If a guest receives a poor review, say for rudeness or drunkenness, this affects their personal profile and other businesses have the option of refusing them in future.

This two-way feedback means that customers are less inclined to leave a really poor review, but rather be more diplomatic in their dealings. The result is that approximately 95 percent of short-term rentals on Airbnb have an overall rating that ranges from 4.5 to 5 stars; good news for tourism business owners.

Unverified reviews

Google My Business/Maps and TripAdvisor allow anyone to write a review of any business at any time i.e. unverified reviews. The result is that many reviews are based on hearsay or are blatantly false.

While we may not like this, we can't opt out, as anyone can list your business on these platforms without your consent. For this reason, it's better to take control of your listing and respond to these reviews.

Summary

• As a business you can't remove a negative review, however you can respond with your explanation of events to create a balanced view for potential future customers.
• Verified reviews occur when only customers who have booked and experienced the tourism business are permitted to leave a review.
• Airbnb and Agoda offer two-way reviews as both the business and the customer can review each other.