Tackling Fake Reviews & Protecting Your Hotel’s Reputation
Industry News- The Fight Against Fake Reviews
The hospitality industry faces a growing challenge with fake reviews because travelers overwhelmingly (more than 90%) consult reviews prior to making travel purchases. In 2023, TripAdvisor blocked a record two million fake reviews, marking a significant increase from previous years. The reviews blocked included incentivized and fraudulent consumer reviews aimed at either boosting or harming a business (TripAdvisor 2023 Review Fraud Trends).
Additionally, in February, the FTC held an informal hearing to discuss proposed new rules to penalize businesses that buy or sell fake reviews, aiming to protect consumers and ensure fair competition (Federal Trade Commission). Key topics included defining prohibited practices, such as creating or purchasing fake reviews, hijacking reviews, and suppressing negative reviews. The hearing also addressed concerns about the rule's potential impact on third-party platforms and the need for clear guidelines to avoid unintended consequences (Manatt).
A Look Back- Our Long-Standing Stance on Fake Reviews
The issue of fake reviews is not new to us at GuestInsight. Nine years ago, we highlighted the problem in our blog post, Fake Reviews Are in the News Again. Our long-standing position for hoteliers has been that the best defense is a good offense: collect your own authentic feedback through guest surveys, integrate a problem resolution tool into your feedback loop, encourage happy guests to post public reviews, and inform the operations of your business with the feedback data you collect so that you can continue to meet or exceed the expectations of guests.
Action Items- How to Increase the Quantity and Quality of Your Reviews
By asking every guest for feedback through a rich guest experience survey, you can limit negative guest issues from making it to public review sites, as well as compile data that can guide tweaks to services/facilities,. These measures will help you maintain or boost the reputation and scores you’re aiming for.
- Maximize Positive Reviews: Use surveys that identify happy guests and offer them a seamless click-through option to post their positive feedback on review sites.
- Resolve Issues Proactively: Ensure guests have the opportunity to resolve any issues through a mechanism in your surveys before they consider leaving a review.
- Engage with Guests: Encourage genuine reviews by engaging with your guests during their stay and post-departure.
Tool Highlight- GuestInsight’s Review Enhancement Features
Of course, we practice what we preach; GuestInsight surveys gather actionable feedback, offer guests a problem resolution path, and provide direct links to review sites. This approach helps our clients maximize both the number of reviews and the percentage of great reviews, giving them a competitive edge. Hotels using our survey platform to gather guest experience feedback have seen significant improvements in their online review profiles.
What Do You Think?
Thank you for reading! We welcome your comments, questions, and any further dialogue.