It is increasingly important to correctly manage your establishment’s online reputation. Travelers focus on other internet user’s opinions and how the hotel has responded to them to decide whether or not to hire their services.

Food, beverage, and the opening hours of services offered by the hotel are the points most commonly commented by Spanish guests after their vacations. Spanish tourists are very demanding when it comes to service, and even if they have enjoyed their stay at the hotel, they will always find a flaw that can be worked on. This is why it is very important to know how to respond to this type of opinions, an adequate response can turn a passive client into a supporter of the brand.

But don’t worry, at Zink, we are experts on online hotel reputation. We will share a few tricks to correctly respond to these opinions.

1.- Reframe the arguments.
It is very complicated to satisfy every client’s culinary tastes. And not everybody will like what we offer.

In these cases, we should always regret that the client hasn’t been able to enjoy this service during their stay. It is a worrying thing that a client hasn’t enjoyed an aspect of the service and it must be revised.

But you can turn this around by explaining all the culinary options offered at the buffet. Always with arguments, for example, commenting on the menu rotation. In this way, future clients who see this opinion will appreciate the great gastronomical variety offered by the hotel, and what they will encounter during their stay.

2.- The customer is always right?
This is a controversial question. We have always worked under the notion that the client is always right, this is true, but with certain nuances.

Customers express their sentiments and experiences after enjoying their vacations from their point of view. We can never tell the customer that he is wrong because it is his perspective of the experience. What should be done instead is offering users all the different points of view of the situation.

If a guest expresses his discomfort with the drink offered during his stay, we should defend the product, but without calling the customer a liar. Recognizing that we don’t understand what he refers to very well and explaining the types of drinks and cocktails offered by the hotel. You could also mention the type of juice offered during breakfast or the wine served at dinner. In this way, you are implying that even though the client isn’t lying, there are several options.

3.- Highlight the strengths
Sometimes, while we could do the impossible to try and satisfy a client, not everything will be perfect for them. This is why we should highlight the strengths that represent us.

It is possible that a guest may not be happy with the pool or dining room schedule, but we can always explain the reasons behind these schedules, and bring to attention another aspect of the hotel, like food quality or employee hospitality.

4.- Be grateful.
Always, always, always, should we thank the guest for rating his stay at our hotel and for leaving important information. Thanks to these reviews we can learn many lessons, identify potential improvements, and figure out what is being done well.

Customer comments are a great source of information to plan changes and upgrades to hotel services. This is why, whether the guests are satisfied with the experience or not, we should thank them for their contribution.

Thanks to these basic tips to respond to these types of opinions you can now turn any complaint into an opportunity. Now you also have the opportunity to tell future customers about certain aspects of your business and show how we take our guest’s experience into account and we resolve incidents.

If you want to find out if you are managing your hotel’s online reputation properly and if you respond correctly to this type of comments take our test.