EP #11 – Managing Your Online Reputation with Rupesh Patel

Get More Reviews and Improve Your Online Reputation. Did you know that 80% of consumers read online reviews before booking their travel? It’s true. Clearly social media plays a significant role in the purchasing decisions of today’s consumer so business owners must closely manage their online reputation. This is especially true in the hospitality industry.   Rupesh Patel is the CEO of 3 Hospitality, he’s also a hotel owner and the founder of SmartGuests.com. Smart Guests.com is a hospitality review tools company that helps hotels increase revenues and occupancy by boosting the number of online reviews for their hotels, and boost their reputation in the process. On today’s episode of Hospitality Academy, Rupesh shares some of his thoughts on how to get more positive online reviews for your property, and why you should even be concerned with online reviews in the first place. Essential Learning Points From This Episode: * Do most consumers trust other consumers, or marketing budgets? * How and why to budget for responding to online reviews. * How do his hotels set monthly review goals? * What is the simple reason most hotels don’t get reviews? * What is the best management advice he’s received? * Much, much more! Social media is everywhere today: people are posting, tweeting, liking and sharing content in every imaginable way from photos to videos to reviews. And nowhere else can you see in play more so than the hospitality industry. Whether someone loves or hates a new restaurant you’ll hear about it on social media, and you’ll hear whether they loved or hated their last vacation too! Because social media is such a part of our everyday lives it’s important to stay on top of what people are saying about their experiences at our hotels, motels, restaurants, etc. If you don’t you are leaving money on the table – or worse, letting your competitors have your guests! No one knows this better than Rupesh Patel. He owns one of the top-ranked Trip Advisor hotels in the Daytona area, and created SmartGuests.com which helps hospitality people generate better online reviews, and respond appropriately to online reviews, and social media in general. Today he shares specific recommendations he has from his Smart Guests business, and some hands-on tips he’s discovered from becoming one of the most highly-recommended hotels in Daytona. Rupesh says there are simple things you can do to generate more reviews, and more positive reviews from your guests. Naturally it starts with the basics: having a clean room and creating a great stay for your clients. From there go above and beyond the norm and what is expected: empower your staff to generate more reviews by giving them their own business cards. Put the person’s name and title and phone number on the card, as well as where you’d like the guest to leave a review online. Be sure your staff is building rapport and asking for feedback from guests during their stay too, they can hand out their cards as they do so. Another simple way to get more reviews and feedback is to change your comment cards. A lot of hotels have comment cards with 10 to 15 questions on them, most guests don’t have time nor the inclination to fill out that many responses. Instead, follow the example of Rupesh’s We Care card and ask two questions: How was your stay? Then ask for an answer between poor and excellent. For the second question ask them to list one thing you can do to improve their future visits. And that’s it! Now that you know how to generate more feedback and increase the number ...