7 tools to track and manage your hotel’s online reputation
7 tools to track and manage your hotel’s online reputation
A bad online reputation can leave a hotel in ruins. Damaging comments and ratings can make guests think twice about booking with you, and that poor status can spread like wildfire.
We all know you can’t please everyone. You should always aim to create the perfect guest experience, but there will forever be a handful of guests with something to complain about.
It’s inevitable.
To manage the situation, you must monitor these negative comments so you can take action. If you can find the source quickly and fashion a polite and helpful response, you can dramatically shift people’s opinions about your hotel.
You’ll show you’re a company who takes responsibility and cares about every guest you cater for. That kind of fast acting response can only work in your favour.
Likewise, if someone comments positively about your hotel, you want to be there to join the conversation and thank your guest for taking the time to share their kind words.
Your guests are online talking about you. So you need to be there too.
With 88% of consumers saying online reviews influence their perceptions about companies, and 80% reporting that negative online comments changed their purchasing decision, you can’t afford not to listen.
Monitoring and managing your online reputation is vital to your marketing strategy.
Check out these free and low-cost tools that make that task a cinch.
Google Alerts
Google’s Google Alerts allows you to set up alerts whenever someone mentions your hotel online.
All you need to do is add your hotel’s name, set the type of results you want and when you want to receive them.
The alerts will be sent straight to your inbox. You can even monitor your mentions in real time and receive the comments as they happen.
No more trawling through various platforms to see when someone’s talking about you. Google Alerts means you can track and manage your online reputation instantly. And as with most things from Google, it’s completely free to use.
Reputation.com
The platform from Reputation is rather comprehensive. They’ve left no area of reputation management untouched.
You can monitor reviews from Google, Facebook and Tripadvisor, you can create guest surveys, monitor comments and publish directly to social media, ensure accurate business listings and more.
They also give you a reputation score based on the most important review sites, and compare you with similar hotels in the area.
This kind of hands on monitoring goes far beyond simply tracking comments. This is extensive reporting and analytics, using all the variables so you can make drastic improvements.
Trackur.com
Trackur monitors social media mentions about your hotel and sends instant notifications. The platform analyses the buzz around your hotel on blogs, reviews, forums and social media, revealing who’s talking about you, your influence scoring, and you can even white label your dashboard.
You can also measure trends allowing you to see which of your marketing efforts get the best results.
Socialmention.com
Social Mention is another free tool that monitors the web for mentions of your hotel name. You can also search competitors or any phrase relating to your industry.
If you want to check a specific corner of the web, you can filter your search to blogs, microblogs, videos, images, bookmarks or questions.
The platform provides in depth details on sources and people, your reach, if the comments are positive or negative and when you were last mentioned.
Unfortunately, you can’t receive notifications as the comments happen, so you will need to check in manually once in awhile. But for a free tool, it’s not to be sneered at.
Complaints search box
Created by Go Fish Digital, the complaints search box lets you monitor over 40 complaints websites for any negative comments about your brand. The tool pulls data from Google allowing you to track and put right any bad experiences guests may have had at your hotel.
Again, this is not an automated tool so you will need to come back each time, but it is free to use.
ReviewTrackers.com
ReviewTrackers is a tool specifically designed to monitor your online reviews. In one dashboard, you can see comments from Google, Facebook Tripadvisor and 80 other review sources.
They also offer analytics tools where you can receive summaries via email and build reports based on data segments such as location, rating and sentiment.
They also claim to be able to increase your positive reviews by 400%. Ensuring ‘the average reviews will carry enough weight to drown out the negative reviews.’
Aboutmyhotel.com
Aboutmyhotel scans and monitors important online sources such as opinions, reviews, scores, images and videos about your hotel.
The platform offers a reputation analysis in the form of diagrams and indicators so it’s easy to follow. It also lets you analyse reviews by time, source type and rating.
Whenever a new review or comment is posted on the web, you’ll get an email notification so you can post a quick response.
Managing your online reputation has obvious benefits. It not only lets you engage with previous guests and form stronger relationships, it also offers valuable feedback on what you’re doing right or wrong.
These tools are a great starting point to help you keep tabs on your brand online. Do you have a favourite?
The Booking Factory team
