We live in a world with social media and review websites. This makes it easier than ever for customers to post feedback about the experiences they had with your tourism business.
It’s important to keep track of this visitor feedback and to respond to the comments and feedback you receive.
It provides immediate feedback that highlights successes, or areas for improvement and development.
It informs the decision-making process for other potential customers. Will they decide to book with your business – or not?
The more positive conversation there is about a business online, the better. This is very attractive to customers.
Engaging with feedback builds trust and loyalty with customers and encourages repeat business.
It’s good for search engine optimisation (SEO). Businesses with positive reviews may be weighted higher in search engine rankings.
Reviews give you feedback on customer expectations. They also provide information to help make informed decisions. This way, you can be sure to meet customer expectations and exceeded them in the future.
If a customer wants to give real-time feedback, they'll usually do so on social media, mainly Facebook and X (Twitter).
Tip: use a social monitoring tool to help track multiple social media channels at once.
People often share on review websites once their trip is complete. Some sites aggregate review comments from multiple websites. This enables you to respond to feedback from these sites from the one platform.
Take ownership of your Google Business Profile and images and reply to reviews.
TripAdvisor is the largest travel review site. There are 280 reviews left on the site every minute.
Be sure to respond to these posts and thank the customer
Share the post on your businesses social media channels. This is social proof that shows future potential customers that there are others enjoying your offering
Acknowledge the review and show commitment to fixing it. Be sure to respond through on social media / review website and ask for alternative contact details to follow up with the customer
Don’t delete the comment or respond negatively. The customer can just post the comment again if it’s removed and doesn’t solve the issue raised by the customer
Some tips on how to manage customer feedback for your tourism business:
Gather more or specific feedback. Encourage customers to leave a review online through your preferred channels. This can be either on social media or a review website.
Set up Google Alerts to receive email notifications when someone mentions your business online. You can use it to track certain key words and phrases.
Add Live Chat to your website. You can do this by adding web code to your homepage. This allows customers to ask, and receive answers to, their questions in real time.
Analyse and track any feedback. Your review websites and social media will show you:
Share feedback with the whole business
Highlight feedback on your tourism businesses website as social proof. Take a look at pulling through a feed of live reviews from social channels or review website.