Guest Experience, Guest Communication and Reviews
Monday 29th April, 2019 by Host & Stay
In today’s digital world, users are constantly looking for social proof before making a purchase, a booking or a commitment, so consistently great reviews across multiple platforms will ensure your holiday let property is easy to find, and it will give the user that extra prompt they may need to complete their booking.
When it comes to reviews on the OTA (Online Travel Agent) platforms, they play a wider role than just whether or not your guests enjoyed their stay, and an important factor on every OTA will be where your property ranks in the search results. As important as ranking first on Google, ranking highly within your area on every OTA will ensure you drive a good volume of bookings.
There are a number of factors that can affect your ranking, and as with Google search algorithms, some of these factors are somewhat mysterious, but two very basic but drastically important factors are your properties Guest Review Score and your Guest Response Time.
On guest response time, each OTA (Online Travel Agent) typically sets a target of responding to booking requests and guest messages within one hour – at Host North Yorkshire, we reply within a matter of minutes as the impact is hugely positive for potential guests and it could be the difference between getting a booking or missing out.
Setting a high standard for you guests early in the process should then flow throughout the entire guest experience. Maintaining a high guest review score on every OTA platform is essential if you want to appear highly in the rankings, and each OTA will have their own scoring mechanism. Airbnb for example is based on a 5 star rating, and Booking.com is based on a score out of 10.
We expect around 20% of our Stay North Yorkshire guests to leave a review, and therefore one bad or not so good score can take some time to resurrect, especially if you are not generating consistent review volumes on each channel.
At Host Yorkshire we ensure that each guest receives a follow up email within 48 hours of their stay. We always let them know that that they will receive the best rate by booking with us directly at www.staynorthyorkshire.com – and we always then point them to an independent review platform. Usually this is TripAdvisor, but you could experiment by changing this link every few months to also build up your review content on Facebook and Google.
So in summary, ensure guest communication and guest experience feature highly on your priority list, as they can very much be the make or break of your Holiday Let property. If you want to know that all of this is being taken care of without the hassle of doing it yourself, then get started with us today, and we’ll do the rest for you.