Many vacation rental owners are scared of
receiving reviews of their vacation rental. It’s bad enough if there person is
being fair and unbiased, but there are lots of stories out there out owners
receiving bad reviews that are totally unjustified.
However, building up a portfolio of positive reviews is actually fairly simple.
Many owners avoid asking their
guests to post reviews on Tripadvisor or another vacation rental site. However,
this is a very risky strategy. Firstly, without positive reviews, you are
missing out on many potential bookings from guests who use reviews as their
primary way of reassuring themselves of the quality of your vacation rental. More importantly,
it is becoming increasing difficult to avoid someone posting a review of your
property. If one bad review slips through before you have had a chance to build up
a portfolio of positive ones, this could be a disaster for your vacation rental
business.
So, how do you build up such a portfolio?
Here’s what I suggest. After your guest has
returned home, send them an email, thanking them for their business and asking
them to confirm that everything was to their satisfaction. I also usually offer
a nominal (5%) discount if they want to book again with me. (I ask them to book
directly with me, rather than through the website, as this means I can avoid
commissions/ bookings fees associated with Commission-only listing sites,
enabling me to pass on this saving to the guest without impacting my revenue.)
If they come back to me to confirm that
everything was okay, I then ask them if they would be prepared to complete a
review and send them the requisite links.
If they come back to let me know about
problems they had, I thank them for their feedback and try to prevent these problems from happening again.
If they don’t come back to me, I don’t take
it any further.
My experience is that most guests a) are
happy with my vacation rental and b) will come back to confirm this and do a (positive) review.
