Guest Reviews: Maximize Growth Potential with Proactive Requests

Proactively asking your customers to leave reviews is a good idea for various reasons. Firstly, guest reviews can help to improve the quality of your property and the service you offer. These reviews can provide you with valuable feedback regarding how you run your business, as well as on aspects of your vacation rental that you need to improve.

Also, positive reviews can help you to attract more guests and increase the profitability of your business. They are an effective form of free publicity, given that people tend to trust the comments of other guests more than other, more traditional, forms of publicity. In summary, requesting customer reviews anticipatorily can help you to improve your business and increase revenue.

Do all guests leave reviews after their stay?

No, although you might think so, not all guests will write a review of their stay. In fact, it is beneficial to have a policy in place of requesting them from guests systematically, as according to a study from Trustyou only 22% of guests leave reviews without being asked.

These reviews are pure gold for vacation rental businesses, but they can’t boost our reputation if we don’t have access to them. This waste is even greater if in fact we have a great number of satisfied customers whose comments we could be showing off. Even for this reason alone it is important to have a system in place to ensure we ask every single customer to leave a rating and review of our vacation property rental.

Is it difficult to request reviews from guests in our vacation rental?

Proactively asking for reviews from guests is not only beneficial to our vacation rental business, but also extremely easy to do. The reason for this is that all guests are willing to discuss their experiences. Plus, writing a review takes no time at all.

A study from Brightlocal showed that 76% of consumers that are asked for comments on their experience are happy to leave a review. In addition, it is likely that the majority of these people have a positive disposition, which may result in them leaving a more positive review.

With Revyoos, you can share a request form with your guests and collect direct guest reviews that you can display using our widgets.

Are guests who have had a bad experience more inclined to leave a review?

Guests who have had a bad experience are more prone to leaving a review than those who have had a good one. After a bad experience, people may feel frustrated or angry and therefore motivated to share this with others in order to warn them. They may also be motivated to share their experiences if they feel they are helping to improve the overall quality of service offered by the vacation rental.

On the other hand, customers who have had a good experience may feel satisfied and therefore not have the same necessity to leave a review. Therefore, it is without doubt that guests who have had a bad experience are more likely to write a review than those who have had a positive experience. Naturally, this will also be a negative one.

Moreover, various studies have shown that customers that have a negative experience are 3 times as likely to write a review without having to be asked than those that have a positive experience. Proactively asking all guests for reviews, especially those who have had a good experience, helps to counteract the number of negative reviews, boost average ratings and increase the overall number of reviews received. These are all factors that can help to attract new guests in the future.

Results of a new policy of actively requesting guest reviews

Airbnb is a good example of the benefits of employing a policy of actively asking for customer reviews. The platform uses a system of reviews that allow hosts and guests to mutually ‘score’ each other after every stay. Given the benefits that this brings them both, 72% of guests leave reviews for their hosts.

After ever Airbnb stay, once the customer has checked-out, the guest and the host both receive emails requesting them to provide feedback on each other. Guests can score a host on categories such as cleanliness, communication and the location of the property. Hosts can also score the guests on separate categories such as their cleanliness and the respect shown for the rules of the property.

These reviews and scores are then published on the profiles of both the hosts and guests, where they can be seen by other Airbnb users.

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References:

1. «Local Consumer Review Survey 2023». Brightlocal, 2023.