Being in the hotel business, one just cannot ignore the Tripadvisor reviews. Guests are not only excited about putting their reviews on hotel websites after their visit, but they also love to draft their detailed experience, either positive or negative. Travel planners also rely on these reviews to plan their trips. To learn more tips and tricks about hotel marketing, get enrolled in some of the best Hotel Management Courses in Kolkata.
Tripadvisor has already establishes itself as a travel giant and had emerged as a reliable source of travel information. It will not be an exaggeration to say that if it’s Google for day-to-day search, it’s Tripadvisor for travel search! This is what we are talking about.
It’s time to throw eyes on a few more facts about Tripadvisor:
- Tripadvisor is a source of more than 290 million reviews from travelers all around the world.
- Nearly 126,000 destinations and 5.3 million businesses maintain their presence on Tripadvisor.
- More than 230 million people have downloaded the Tripadvisor android app.
- Approximately 190 new reviews are posted on Tripadvisor every minute. Just imagine its effectiveness!
The above stats are enough to prove that getting positive reviews from the guests is a non-disposable asset for the hotelier to bank upon. Here are a few tips to help you get the best out of hotel marketing on Tripadvisor.
Claim your listing
The first thing you need to do is to visit tripadvisor.com/owners and claim your business in case you haven’t done that already. This is the preliminary and a very important step because it enables you to update your listing, correct inaccurate information, upload your property pictures, receive e-mails whenever people post reviews on your property and respond to them accordingly.
Travelers always want to know what your hotel can deliver before they make a booking. Mention a brief description of your hotel and make sure to highlight all the important aspects about your property.
Add Tripadvisor widgets
You can add Tripadvisor widgets and add that to your hotel website by visiting tripadvisor.com/widgets. These small lines of code will enable you to view live reviews on your website. There are different types of reviews one can get on Tripadvisor- one type shows you the overall star rating and total number of reviews while the other one shows the most recent 5 star reviews and displays the number of travelers who have marked you ‘Excellent’.
You can also add the Tripadvisor app on your Facebook page by visiting tripadvisor.com/FacebookApp. This is a pretty simple stuff to do and you will not require any coding work to do this. If good reviews are pouring into your Tripadvisor account, why not inform your Facebook audience about it.
If your marketing budget allows a little more, you can go for full business listing on Tripadvisor in addition to your own free listing. This will allow you to add direct contact details to your listings and drive the business directly to your property. Other than this, you will also be able to pitch exclusive offers through Tripadvisor.
Tripadvisor also sends you free stickers to stick in your hotel premises. On requesting for it, they take close to six weeks to get these stickers delivered at your address. In order to request Tripadvisor stickers you can visit the link tripadvisor.com/StickerRequestSupport.
If you want more reviews from guests regarding their experience of staying at your hotel, you can do so by visiting tripadvisor.com/ReviewExpress. With the help of this link you can send standard e-mail to the guests visiting your property and request them to write about your hotel.
In case a guest is looking for hotels in your city, you can get your property to appear at the top of the listing by paying for ad banner. You should definitely go for it if your budget permits. It will significantly increase the chances of your hotel link being clicked. You can know more about this by clicking on tripadvisor.com/MediaKit.
If you are looking to increase your direct bookings without paying big commissions to the OTAs, you can use Tripconnect Instant booking program to promote your hotel through Tripadvisor. You just have to pay the nominal commission charges. To get more information on this go to: tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking.
Conclusion
Always try to get the maximum out of Tripadvisor’s resources by visiting tripadvisor.com/Owners. Your chances to get attention from prospective guests will increase many times if you can encourage your previous guests to write reviews or post videos about their experience on Tripadvisor.