Guests value reviews and ratings the same way they value recommendations from friends and family. According to the consumer research that we conducted in 2022 on 10,000 travellers all over the world, over 90% use reviews to discover and evaluate a hotel.
“Tulavo has an inbuilt review system which helps you get more bookings by basing on what your guests are talking about you”.
Why it matters: Guests rely on reviews to make their decisions and consider them as expert advice to learn more about how well a hotel fits their travel needs and lifestyle.
If your hotel is reviewed by your guests, chances of having your hotel bookings increasing are high. Study shows that reviews increase bookings by at least 15% per month.
The big picture: When you list your property on Tulavo, your objective is to attract more bookings from travellers. It’s however automatic that people will book your hotel. You have to go an extra mile to make your hotel stand out from others in order to attract the attention of travellers. This is how you will get daily bookings.
The question therefore is how can you attract visitors to your hotel on Tulavo?
In this article we are going to use reviews and ratings as one of the tricks used to optimize bookings from online booking platforms.
Reviews are comments from people who have ever booked your hotel. They are given an opportunity to share their guest experience when they visited your hotel. These comments are highly respected by other travellers during their hotel booking process. To summarize this, guests are allowed to summarize their experience in a graphical presentation called ratings. This is a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being the poorest and 5 being the highest. They are 1 to 5 stars.
Check out your page on Tulavo, how many stars do you have? How many people left a comment after checking out?
These comments speak a lot about your hotel and do a great job in influencing the number of bookings you are going to receive.
The secret of having people reviewing your hotel on Tulavo is that it will help improve your hotel visibility on the internet by pushing you to the top of both the Google and Tulavo search pages. You will receive many guests who book both offline and online depending on what your past guests are ‘telling’ your future guests. You must however allow these two people to talk. It’s only through reviews and ratings that the two gets an opportunity to talk.
What you have to do: You will have these numbers increasing if you do the following;
1. Encourage all your hotel visitors to rate your facility. Ask them to visit your page on tulavo.com and scroll down to the review area to share how they have experienced your services.
2. Share your hotel room link to your social media such that they can easily book when they are ready to travel to your area.
How reviews influence a travellers decision.
1. Travellers aren’t just using reviews to book hotels from online platforms. According to research made by Tulavo, over 80% of travellers first go to the internet to research hotels before they will walk to your hotel to book a room.
2. Our research found that travellers often turn to ratings and reviews when they’re in the final stages of their decision making process to book. In fact, 75% of travellers often look at the available ratings, and 62% of travellers often look at customer reviews (comments).
3. Reviews help the customer to get a clue of the bad and good side of your hotel room. It gives them more information beyond the official data you provided. It is not strange that you also look for recommendations before you buy a product. It is these recommendations that guests also look for in reviews.
4. Reviews and ratings help increase brand loyalty. Many travellers feel proud when they talk about their travels. Leaving a review gives them an opportunity to invite others follow their footsteps. If travellers love your hotel, they will be free and willing to promote it to their friends and contacts. A review gives them that opportunity. Remember to tap into this opportunity by inviting them to review your hotel on Tulavo.
What about fake reviews?: When you are using reviews, try at all costs to avoid fake reviews. Fake reviews will just destroy your hotel. A fake review will have when people who have never even booked a room are invited to review your hotel.
Although reviews are very important, travellers are always on the lookout for the red lights that can help them identify a bad hotel such that they can avoid it. Make sure you are posting authentic reviews from your real customers.
Although reviews are a very important marketing tool, avoid using it for marketing. Instead use it as a peer communication tool between your old customers and prospects.
Travellers are looking for reviews on the quality of your customer care, cleanliness and hygiene, security and promptness. A fake review will not help them get this.
Don’t be afraid of a negative review. Most travellers are looking for these as well. Travellers want to know how you respond to complaints. The trick is in how you respond to your visitors comments. Responding to your visitors comments will increase chances of booking your room.
A fake review is identified by;
1. Many reviews with similar wording.
2. Review content not matching the hotel.
3. An overwhelming amount of five star ratings and positive reviews.
If you have a hotel listed on tulavo.com, you should now start working on your rating as you watch them grow. Give yourself a periodic target say for instance, to receive 10 reviews per week. Start now and see how it can work for you. You will enjoy it.
