Dealing With a Bad Review on Your Vacation Property

You hope it will never happen, but the chances are it will. After all your hard work and efforts to ensure your guests have a comfortable stay someone posts a review that slates your rental property. You might feel angry, hurt or humiliated. You're also likely to feel a degree of anxiety, this is after all your livelihood and negative reviews aren't a great way to gather new guests. The following tips will help you to minimise the damage and maybe even get something positive out of the situation.

Don't panic! One negative review is not going to kill your business, if nothing else, it at least demonstrates that your reviews are for real!

Don't criticise your guest. It seems unfair that they're allowed to criticise and you're not, but they're the customer and that's the way it works. Remember that your response is written as if to the past customer, but in truth you're writing largely for the benefit of future potential guests. An attack on the past guest might feel very satisfying in the moment, but it's unprofessional and will do more damage than the original review.

Do thank them: For their time and trouble in offering the feedback, and acknowledge that, for whatever reason they didn't enjoy their stay. Apologise for this fact, however much this may stick in your throat! Address the issues they've raised and state what measures you've taken to correct the problems. Make it clear that customer service and satisfaction are priorities for your business. Express your regret that on this occasion you didn't live up to your own standards. Keep it brief and close with a hope that should this guest return you'll have a chance to speak to them in person about the past situation. Finish with good wishes for their future.

Respond Promptly (but not impulsively). If you don't, it looks as if you don't care what past guests have to say. A prompt, carefully though out response demonstrates your professionalism. Of course you can't respond to a review unless you know it's been posted. Some of the advertising portals will notify you of any activity on your pages. When you're advertising across a number of portals you'll find it easier to manage your activity if you use a decent vacation rentals software package.

Your final task is to assess the specific criticism and address the issue on the ground. If there was validity in the review you need to talk it through with your staff and put measures in place to resolve the problems raised.

If you think the criticism was unfair and breaks the terms of usage of the site, for example you believe that it's been left by a competing business or someone who hasn't stayed with you, you have the right to protest the review. You may be able to get the review removed in these cases. You need to do this before writing a response as you'll loose your right to protest once you've replied.

Plan your response carefully and you've done everything you can online, to minimise the effect of the negative review. You've demonstrated that you care about your guests and that the experience described is not what you strive to provide.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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