How property managers can use ratings and reviews on its website to generate more confidence amongst its future guests

Property Managers often find themselves facing a similar problem; reaching the intended audience to such an extent that they know about the vacation rental listing, but that they don’t end up make a reservation or enquiring about further information. One of the reasons for this is a lack of confidence.

But, what do you have to do to generate more confidence in your vacation rental website? Guests’ ratings and reviews, their testimonies and their comments are all, without doubt, essential in generating confidence. But they must be used well. In this blog, we will explain some of the keys to success in managing your customers’ ratings and reviews appropriately, with the end result of generating confidence in your vacation rental website.

Why is it necessary for a website that offers vacation rentals to generate confidence?

The letting of a vacation home for either a handful of days, or even a short term rental, should be considered an important part of the yearly budget of the average family. It’s a decision to spend money that is not taken lightly, but one that is only taken once they are totally convinced that the house or apartment will meet all of the requirements for their vacation. At the end of the day, to them, you are a complete stranger! The decision is not only a rational one, there is also a significant emotional side to it as well. Nobody wants their precious spare time, such as their vacations, to get off to a bad start simply because they chose an inappropriate property to stay in.

Furthermore, nobody is going to be convinced that your vacation rental is the best option for them if, beforehand, they don’t trust what you are telling them about your vacation houses or apartments. Guests must have full, unequivocal confidence that the website offering is credible and that there are no hidden nasty surprises.

Ratings and reviews of previous guests in the same vacation rental serve as proof that the information being shown about the listing on the website is accurate and truthful, given that they are being verified by a third party. In fact, according to various studies, 49% of people trust the comments and opinions that strangers make, via their reviews, just as much as the recommendations from their family and friends (reference).

How reviews must be used in order to generate confidence

Opinions and reviews are powerful tools that can be used to generate confidence in your website, but you have to know how to use them well. Also, you have to understand that confidence in the use of ratings and reviews has fallen in recent years. The reason for this, is that websites that publish fake reviews have proliferated and this has reduced the confidence in this method of validation. In fact, according to recent studies, 67% of people question from the very beginning the authenticity of reviews that can be read online (reference).

Please note, this is not a contradiction with, as was said earlier, the 49% of people who do trust reviews. These are recent statistics, taken in 2022. Growing distrust in reviews is reflected in the fact that in the year 2020, a lot more people blindly believed in them; precisely 79% said then that they trusted reviews taken from a website as much as the recommendations from family and friends (reference).

The conclusion to this shift is this: ratings and reviews can no longer be used to generate confidence in the traditional way, by simply placing a list of selected reviews on our websites. Not if we want them to be effective, that is.

We know from various studies that what does increase confidence in your website is verified reviews from third parties. Therefore, combining your own reviews with third party reviews on your website is a highly effective strategy in generating confidence and trustworthiness in your brand.

When we talk about verified reviews from third parties with regard to a vacation rental, we are referring to reviews that are published on OTAs: online marketplaces such as Airbnb, Booking or Vrbo. Transparent Intelligence, a big data company within our specialised vacation rental industry, carried out a detailed analysis of this issue. It determined that the occupation rate of vacation rentals on OTAs such as Airbnb, Booking or Vrbo increased by more than 90% when they had more than 20 reviews, compared to those that didn’t have any. This is due to the confidence that reviews from OTAs give. In order to obtain similar results on our webpages, we must include verified third party reviews.

A variety of studies show that 70% of buyers consult various opinion platforms before selecting a company (reference). This is the so-called “multiple source effect”. The consumer, to avoid false reviews, has more confidence in, and gives more weight to, ideas expressed multiple times across different websites.

Due to the distrust generated by fake reviews, consumers also don’t trust those that appear to be unreasonably positive. In other words, they don’t trust products or services that are only awarded 5 stars. In this graphic, we can see how the conversion rate increases up to its highest point for those with 4.9 stars and then ends up falling back down for those with 5 stars.

In this regard, Northwestern University determined that consumers have more faith in the reviews and the stars awarded when there is combination of negative as well as positive ones. This gives the feeling of a much more natural, balanced and believable evaluation.

Moreover, the way in which the property managers respond to guest reviews also influences the confidence of the customer. Consumers have shown that they are much more likely to use a company that responds to every single review and comment, be it positive or negative, than one that doesn’t respond to any of them. The difference is not marginal either; 89% would use a company that responds to everything, as opposed to 43% that doesn’t respond to anything (reference).

You should have all of these statistics in mind when comes to using ratings and reviews with the objective of generating confidence in your vacation rental website.