Top 5 Ways to Profit from a Positive Guest Review
5 Comments
When a guest leaves you a positive review on a site like TripAdvisor, it’s not only more powerful than advertising – it can have multiple uses. I encourage you to “recycle” your positive guest reviews to get the most benefit:
1) Publish it on your website – Rather than just pontificating on how great your hotel is, get others to sing your praises. You may want to feature positive reviews directly on your home page, or create a separate page like the Inn at Bay Harbor did.
2) Include it in your reservations system – In my web booking system makeover, I talked about the importance of reassuring the guest if you want to improve conversions. You may want to put the positive review in the sidebar so it’s visible without being distracting. With a little piece of code, you can randomly draw from a list, and display a different review each time.
3) Feature it in your offline advertising – Electronics retailer Best Buy understands the role customer reviews play in influencing buying decisions. That’s why they use snippets of online reviews in their print advertising.
4) Use it in your marketing collateral – Take this beyond advertising: what other communications materials could you put positive feedback on or in? Newsletters? Press releases? Social networks?
5) Borrow it for your AdWords campaign – Frankly, I’m a little hesitant to share this tip because its effectiveness may diminish if a lot of people use it. 
In limited AdWords test campaigns for a few clients, I’ve experimented with using guest testimonials in the ad copy. Because this stands out from the self-praise most hotels publish, I’ve seen excellent results. You may want to give it a try:
Guest-written Adwords copy
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Funny Josiah… I know what you are talking about. You want to create discourse, conversation, collaboration… but you don’t always want to give away your peach of a trick. Thanks for sharing, and we appreciate it quite a bit, as always. Cheers, and be well!
Michael @hhotelconsult, @thehotelshotel, @foodbevfeed
Thanks, Michael! I once heard someone say “Always give away your best secrets” – and that’s sort of been my marketing mantra since
Hi Josiah,
As always, great tips, great posts!
We, at Tiara Hotels & Resorts, are currently seeing more and more referals precisely because of positive guest reviews.
For example, in the past 6 months, our ranking in TripAdvisor has been uptades almost every two weeks. One tool that TripAdvisor provides to the hotels is the chance to directly input a html code with updated reviews or ranking positioning of the hotel. This is definitely one of my “to do” next steps, both in our website, as well as in our booking page.
Clients don’t want to know just how much it will cost. They want to get the idea, preferably from other clients, if the cost will match their expectations and they, of course, feel more secure when they’re going to book the hotel.
Cheers!
This is great information. I am designing a special offer landing page for a hotel and wanted to include some TA testimonials… However, the TA reviews are extremely long. I wonder what the legal (and otherwise) ramifications are if you only want to use a portion of a testimonial, take out certain sections, etc. A) Do we need to get any kind of permission from TripAdvisor? B) How important is it to confirm with the TA member you are going to use their testimonial and confirm the shortened version is OK with them (bearing in mind investment of time involved in doing this). It’s alright if you don’t answer this (or something you want to keep for Inner Circle members) but I just wanted to mention it as an issue I’m dealing with for the benefit of all.