Recently, a friend of mine was discussing an incident that happened at his hotel. A guest left a negative review for his property. Why?
Because he wanted to have early check-in and rooms were unavailable. The reason sounds a bit absurd. But in the end, the hotel had a bad review.
Two words that give hoteliers a nightmare: Negative reviews.
Almost every hotel struggles with reviews in 3 ways –
- Collecting enough of them.
- Managing negative ones.
- Dealing with fake reviews
You can manage these feedback using an Online Reputation Management (ORM) software. But, avoiding bad ones and dealing with fake reviews is entirely a different thing.
In this blog, I’ll tell you all about negative hotel reviews and how to avoid them.
What guarantees negative hotel reviews?
Keeping guests happy is indeed a tough task. Hoteliers work day and night to accomplish this. But sometimes, guests are unhappy with the hotel’s services.
Such guests are sure to give you bad feedback. Here are some top reasons for negative hotel reviews.
1. Incorrectly mapped location
Assume that you are on a trip and have booked a hotel in a remote area. You are following the directions on Google maps and arrive at the destination. But, there is no sign of any property.
It would surely bother you. You call up the hotel, ask for the correct location and reach there.Ultimately, you leave a bad impression of your property.
Hence, an erroneous location on Google or your website is a big NO. If guests are unable to reach your premises safely and conveniently, you are sure to have negative hotel reviews.
2. Unpleasant ambiance
There’s a saying – “The first impression is the last impression”.
The first thing that guests notice is your hotel’s ambiance. An unclean lobby with an unpleasant smell is sure to drive your guests away. It results in a bad brand image and hampers your guests’ experience.
While entering or even leaving the hotel premises, guests have to cross the common areas of the hotel. If those are left unclean with debris and dust lying around, it would surely leave a bad impression on your guests.
3. Room complaints
An unkempt room is the last thing any guest would tolerate. It is not only limited to cleanliness but also includes various other factors. Some of them are:
Uncleaned rooms
Dirty linen, dust on the shelves, badly maintained washroom and such likes are traits of an unclean room.
If guests find their room in this state, they are sure to lose their cool. They will probably take the pictures and upload them on TripAdvisor or any other OTA.
This brings you a bad review and eventually affects your booking ratio.
Faulty room equipment
Electrical gadgets tend to break down after a while or at least need regular maintenance. It may happen that some equipment might not work during a guest’s stay.
This could be due to faulty mechanisms, short circuits or any other reason. But using malfunctioning equipment is hazardous for guests as well as your hotel’s staff.
Unavailability of the booked room
Hotels don’t acknowledge overbooked guests. Mostly because overbookings happen due to technical or human error.
In such cases, the guests are provided with alternative options to stay. However, the damage is already done.
The guests are quite annoyed in such situations because they have to compromise on another option.
And, this results in you getting negative hotel reviews.
4. Low-quality food
Most of the hotels have an in-house restaurant for guests to order their food from. Obviously, those guests would expect the food to be of good quality.
But, what if it doesn’t meet their expectations?
No one likes to pay high-end prices for meals that cannot be consumed.
For the hotels where the food is outsourced, it is important to keep a check on your vendors’ food quality. If it’s not up to the mark, you are sure to get negative feedback from the guests.
5. Delays in the room services
Bad food is one thing and delayed services are another. In-room dining falls into the latter category. Be it morning tea or dinner, room services are always there to assist guests.
What’s hated is the delay in the services. This could be either due to a shortage of hotel staff or a busy day at the restaurant.
Most people ignore this fact, but guests do leave bad comments for hotel services.
6. Unprofessional staff behavior
Hospitality is all about respecting guests. That’s the first thing hotel management students are made to practice, before they join any property as a professional.
How would you feel if someone treats you rudely? Bad, right?
Similarly, rude and unprofessional behavior will let your guests down. Such a situation happening during their stay is a red alert for you.
Must read: How to handle guest complaints?
7. Showcasing unavailable facilities
While updating your listing on any online booking platform, you select all the amenities and proceed ahead.
Mentioning facilities that are not available in your hotel will surely disappoint your guests.
Suppose, you book a hotel showing ‘gym and spa available’. But, when you reach the premises, you find that such facilities don’t exist. It would be quite a frustrating situation.
Updating such facilities will adversely impact your bookings as well as bring you negative hotel reviews.
8. Guests posting false reviews
Many guests post false reviews to earn some benefits from the hotel. You need to be aware of such reviews.
The problem is you cannot delete such reviews from the website. But you do have an option of reporting the same.
You can also reply to this review, citing the angle of what happened in reality. This would help the readers to understand the situation.
How hotels can avoid negative reviews?
I’m sure after reading all those reasons mentioned above, you would be looking forward to finding a solution. So, it’s time to address the elephant in the room.
1. Follow SOPs
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are a must for every hotel. They standardize your hotel’s process to meet the set benchmark.
SOPs are a clear set of instructions to be followed by the hotel staff for completing any task.
These SOPs apply to all the processes in the hotel. It could be cleaning a doorknob, greeting guests, preparing any recipe or something else.
Using the results in minimal guest complaints helps you avoid bad hotel reviews.
2. Do the SWOT analysis
Every hotel should do its SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats) analysis. You can use your reviews for this task.
The positive ones will showcase your strengths and negative ones, your weaknesses.
Learning about your competitors will make you aware of your threats. Apart from that, monitor and analyze what they are being praised for.
For opportunities, focus on targeting new market areas. And highlight your property with more media and blog coverage.
3. Don’t over promise and under deliver
Imagine, you visit a hotel promising many luxuries and comforts in their ad. But on reaching there you find all of that was just a hoax.
Well that would hurt a bit, right?
Just show your guests only those services which are available at your hotel. There’s no point in sugar coating and presenting them.
This results in creating your hotel’s negative reputation.
4. Ask for feedback during the stay
You must have heard – “Precaution is better than cure.”
Same goes with reviews too. It’s not necessary to ask guests for feedback at the end of the stay. Simply ask, “Are you enjoying your stay sir/madam?” whenever you see them.
They will let you know if they are facing any issues during their stay. This will help you in avoiding negative reviews to an extent.
If you rely on the feedback after check out, you might miss the problem they have faced during their stay. Eventually, the outcome would be negative hotel reviews.
5. Record and rectify
Many hotels maintain a task sheet, to record any guest issues and resolve them on time. These task sheets have moved online owing to technology.
But the main motive remains the same – “Record and rectify”
Let me tell you something from my experience. I used to work as a trainee in a well-known hotel. We used to note down anything a guest would say and share it with the concerned department.
For instance, a guest has asked to clean his room. So, we used to jot it down and contact housekeeping personnel to get the task done. Once it is complete we would strike that off from the list and mention the TAT (Turnaround time).
This helped in minimizing guest complaints and improved the TAT score too.
6. Reply to negative hotel reviews
“Don’t let any review go unanswered” – Always stick to this motto.
Guests are very observant. Before booking a room, they check every aspect of the hotel. Unreplied reviews are one such component.
Dealing with positive reviews is easier. A simple ‘Thank You’ would do good enough. The real challenge lies with replying to a negative review.
It’s advised to analyze the case before responding to such reviews. Once you come to a suitable conclusion, reply politely.
If you use words that would make it sound like it’s the guest’s fault, that would be your worst mistake. Although if the review is false, you can choose to flag and ignore it.
7. Learn from your hotel’s bad reviews
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. – Henry Ford”
Every bad review is like a lesson. Each one is unique and makes you better. You need to check for your hotel’s most criticized aspects and start working on them.
Once you work on these feedback, you’ll see improvement in the guest experience. It is not possible to work on every feedback.
For example, there’s a review from a guest complaining that the room was small. So, will you break the wall and create extra space for them. Of Course not!
But if there’s feedback which is in regards to your service quality, don’t hesitate to address that.
The sooner you start acting on bad reviews, the better will be your future feedback.
Conclusion
Bad reviews give goosebumps to any businessman. When it comes to hotels, it affects their online reputation.
It’s hard to have a completely satisfied guest. We are humans and we tend to make mistakes. However, these errors lead to negative reviews for your hotel.
But what matters is that we learn from them. Once you start analyzing your reviews, it’ll let you know about the scope of improvement.
Eventually, one day you’ll have very few negative reviews for your hotel.
