By learning how to respond to Tripadvisor reviews, you can demonstrate to guests that you care about their feedback and that you take their experience seriously.
Your response to a Tripadvisor review also makes a lasting impression on prospective guests and helps sway their booking decisions in your favor.
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Why Respond to Tripadvisor Reviews?
If you don’t know how to respond to negative reviews and positive feedback through your Tripadvisor for Business account, you are missing out opportunities to drive new business.
According to industry research:
- According to Tripadvisor review analysis, the travel site ranks ahead of personal recommendations, tourist board websites, and guidebooks as the most trusted source for travel planning.
- 83% say Tripadvisor reviews make them feel more confident in their travel decisions, and 96% of hospitality brands worldwide say online reviews are influential in generating bookings.
- Hotels and accommodation properties that respond to Tripadvisor reviews enjoy 17% higher levels of engagement and are 21% more likely to receive a booking inquiry than those who don’t respond to reviews.
- Businesses that respond to more than half of their reviews are 24% more likely to receive a booking inquiry via Tripadvisor.
- Hotels and B&Bs that respond to 65% of their reviews receive an average review rating of 4.15, compared to only 3.81 for those who have not taken the time to answer any of their customer reviews.
The more engaged the business owner — particularly when it comes to responding to Tripadvisor reviews — the more interested the consumer is in the business.
How to Respond to Tripadvisor Reviews (Negative and Positive)
Responding to reviews should be a crucial part of your online review management strategy, especially if you’re managing a hospitality brand. To reply to a review, you need to register with Tripadvisor’s Management Center.
Once you are registered and verified, you can access the Management Center by clicking on “Your Business” in the top-right corner.
If you receive review notification emails, you can also click the “Respond to Reviews” link from the email, then:
- Click the “Reviews” tab in the top menu and select “Respond to Reviews.”
- Choose the Tripadvisor review you would like to respond to by clicking the review in the left-hand sidebar. Reviews can be filtered by date, title, rating, language and response status.
- Enter your review response into the box provided. There is no character limit but remember: nobody wants to read an essay.
- Click the “Submit” button.
Before drafting your Tripadvisor review response, be sure to read the site’s Management Response guidelines. Your response will need to meet these guidelines before it is published.
How Can I Track my Tripadvisor Reviews?
On Tripadvisor, you can sign up to receive email notifications every time a new review is published. This will help you decide which reviews to respond to.
- To sign up for review alerts, select the drop-down next to your username in the top right corner of the Tripadvisor homepage, then scroll down to “Subscriptions.”
- Under the “Emails for Owners” tab, which is next to “Reviews Questions,” select the “Subscribed” bubble.
You can also use online reputation management software to monitor and track reviews on Tripadvisor (along with reviews on 100+ other review sites). ReviewTrackers, for example, can automate your review collection and deliver timely notifications when your customers provide unsolicited feedback and leave reviews.
If you’re managing multiple properties or business locations, you can also use ReviewTrackers’ Local Listing Management feature to optimize your Tripadvisor listings and improve your local search performance.
“Can I Edit My Tripadvisor Response to a Review?”
Currently, it is not possible to edit your response to a Tripadvisor review. If you want to change your response, the best thing to do is to delete your original response and resubmit the edited version.
Tips on How to Respond to Tripadvisor Reviews
Tip 1: Do it ASAP
By quickly responding to a Tripadvisor review, you show guests that you take customer service seriously. It also allows them to hear your side of the story as soon as possible.
Tip 2: Say “Thank You”
These two words go a long way in showing travelers that your business values customer feedback, regardless of its sentiment.
Resolve Issues
Avoid cookie-cutter responses that do not resolve or address any specific issues raised in the review. Sometimes even positive comments and 5-star ratings may include points of concern that the customer wants to discuss with you.
Don’t Lose Your Cool
Bad reviews hurt, but you can protect your brand reputation by responding politely and professionally to Tripadvisor users and solving their customer experience issues.
Highlight the Positives
Highlight any positive feedback or comments contained in the Tripadvisor review. If it’s appropriate, take the opportunity to mention related services or planned upgrades that you would like to share with potential visitors.
Invest in Tools that Drive Efficiency
Replying to Tripadvisor reviews consumes plenty of valuable time, especially for global hotel chains and multi-location brands.
To ensure efficiency, consider investing in online reputation management software to centralize your reviews and help your organization stay on top of what customers are saying. You definitely don’t want to be logging in and out of every Tripadvisor listing manually.
Examples of How to Respond to Tripadvisor Reviews
Let’s look at some examples of how businesses are replying to reviews (both good and bad) on Tripadvisor.
Tripadvisor Review Response Example 1
When a loyal customer expressed her disappointment with her anniversary stay at the Stamford Plaza in Brisbane, executive assistant manager Dale John wrote a pitch-perfect response.
The response addressed the reviewer and started with a “thank you.” It was also very specific about the customer’s experience and provided information on how the hotel planned to resolve certain issues and maintain its usual standards.
Tripadvisor Review Response Example 2
Another review response example worth following is that of Annelies Hamerlinck, owner and manager of Vamos Expeditions in Lima, Peru, for her response to a 5-star review.
The review response is personal, friendly, positive, and concise and clearly shows that management took the time to carefully read and understand the reviewer’s issue. The review response also cleverly repeats positive phrases of the reviewers in exactly the same words as they used them in the review.
Read this blog post for more positive review response examples.
Tripadvisor Review Response Example 3
The Kimpton Hotel Palomar in Chicago is one of the top hotels in the city on Tripadvisor.
Even if the hotel misses the mark in customer experience, the general manager is quick to respond (professionally and politely) to the reviewer, demonstrating that management truly cares about guest feedback and customer experience management.
Tripadvisor Review Response Example 4
Jessica Lavin of Hotel Monaco in Philadelphia saw a positive review as an opportunity to pay the guest a compliment.
There are hundreds of ways you can say thank you, and this review response takes advantage of that. It’s simple, well-written, personalized, and shows genuine appreciation for customer feedback. The response also highlights the hotel’s sense of community.
Tripadvisor Review Response Example 5
It’s not uncommon for some positive reviews to contain a bit of constructive criticism. Here’s a classic example from a Tripadvisor review of Fallowfields Country House Hotel.
The Tripadvisor review response begins and ends with an expression of gratitude. Anthony Lloyd, the owner of the hotel, also responded to the Tripadvisor review in a way that takes the constructive feedback on board, while also reassuring the reviewer (and other potential customers) that the issues are already being sorted out.
Tripadvisor Review Response Example 6
The Landmark London consistently generates glowing Tripadvisor reviews from hotel guests, but if the occasional negative review comes in, the hotel is quick to track it and respond.
The London Landmark is not a cheap hotel. (Prices range from $500 to $4,150 a night.) Naturally, guests will have extremely high expectations of everything that the hotel claims to offer.
In cases wherein these expectations are disappointed, and a guest subsequently posts a bad review, the London Landmark is quick to respond in a way that minimizes the impact of negative feedback while being demonstrative of how much the business cares about the guest experience.
Examples of How NOT to Respond to Tripadvisor Reviews
Before you publish your well-written review responses, take a look at the examples below to avoid common response pitfalls.
Don’t Humiliate Your Customer
Here’s some context on this example: customer Kirsty visited Julie Despot’s Westbury Tavern Restaurant in Clayton, Newcastle-under-Lyme in the UK on Mother’s Day.
She ordered cottage pie but found that it was too hot so she had to wait to eat it until after the rest of her family finished their dinner. Kirsty made a point of saying this in her three-star review of Westbury Tavern on Tripadvisor.
It reportedly took a couple of attempts to get the review through Tripadvisor’s filter. When it finally appeared online, Kirsty’s sentiments were made clear. “Overrated by far!” she exclaimed.
That’s when Julie decided to write her response.
As you’ll see in Julie’s response above, Kirsty was being made fun of for her bad spelling and grammar. Note to business owners: we recommend that you never do this. Treat your customers like royalty.
Even after being interviewed by news site The Sentinel, Julie said she did not regret the way she responded to her unhappy customer. In fact, she thought Kirsty was simply pulling an April Fool’s Day joke.
“On the day the review was posted a member of staff had died and my father had been rushed into hospital with a bleed on the brain,” said Julie, who has been running the Westbury Tavern Restaurant for eight years.
“She caught me on a bad day. I had two reviews taken off so I looked at the guidelines and thought ‘I will do exactly that,’ so I posted another comment with exactly the same language she used.”
No, Julie, it wasn’t an April Fool’s Day joke. In fact, Kirsty said that she felt humiliated by the way the business owner had mocked her grammar and spelling.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was shocked. If I were dyslexic it would have been really upsetting. You should be able to write a review without being slated on the Internet… but they obviously can’t take the criticism.”
Don’t Insult the Guests
According to reports, the manager of the Georgian House Hotel in Glasgow has been fired (and rightly so, we think) after reacting sharply to negative reviews of the property on Tripadvisor.
The unnamed ex-manager repeatedly slammed guests when responding to their criticisms on the popular review site.
Other guests who did not particularly enjoy their stay at the Georgian House Hotel also received similarly vicious management responses.
To Lynnieha, a guest who said she won’t be returning, the ex-manager said: “What do you expect for so little cash.” To another customer who complained about the “nasty breakfast,” the response was: “If you want a good breakfast go to the Hilton and pay £100.00 a night. You pay little you get little.”
