All our clients know that responses to reviews have to be:
- Polite
- Conciliatory
- Constructive
...and above all - legal! Only last week one of our moderators spotted a potential PR nightmare in the making where the hotel guest was demanding compensation for a sleepless night and the hotelier seemed to be suspecting a mild form of blackmail and was about to include an allusion to this in their response. We spoke to the hotelier and suggested that an offer of 'three nights for two' next time the guest stayed might be a more constructive solution - the hotel adopted this strategy and the guest was satisfied (and did not go on to post a negative review).
In Ottowa things panned out slightly differently - and the result was 90 days in jail for the business owner.
Read the full story as reported in the Ottowa Citizen here
At the recent Independent Hotel 12 TripAdvisor session many of the questions from hoteliers related to an increasing and worrying phenomenon - the guest requesting a discount "because you wouldn't want me to post a 'one star' review."
Alistair from TripAdvisor found this a difficult one to answer, because, as one hotelier pointed out: "You don't insist on verification [real name/date of stay] so we can't positively identify the 'blackmailer'."
We have encountered this with clients, and we have thought long and hard about the best way to deal with this that doesn't involve TripAdvisor. Our conclusion: let guests know that this kind of thing simply won't be countenanced. Nicely!
How?
By displaying a notice something like this:
You will, of course, decide on your own wording, but the final statement that effectively says "Don't wait until check-out to complain - and don't expect a discount." is, we think, the key.
