6 Reasons Why You Need an AI Response Generator to Reply to Guest Reviews – By Catalina Brinza
6 Reasons Why You Need an AI Response Generator to Reply to Guest Reviews
TrustYou responseAI allows users to quickly respond to guest reviews using cutting-edge technology, producing genuine responses that feel human with minimal effort required from your staff.
Why Responding to Guest Reviews is Important for Your Hotel
Guest reviews have never been more essential in shaping the reputation and success of hotels. With so many choices available, travelers rely on feedback to make informed decisions and find the best option based on their needs.
95% of travelers read reviews before booking.
Review Responses Impact Bookings, Reputation, and Score
Besides scanning feedback, travelers also pay attention to how hotels respond to reviews. Here’s how review responses shape travelers’ behaviors – and can have a crucial impact on your bookings, guest satisfaction, and, ultimately, revenue:
- 9 out of 10 travelers who read review responses expect a response from the hotel.
- 2 out of 3 guests will return if the hotel addresses their negative reviews.
- 3 out of 4 reviewers expect a response within the first four days after they submit their negative feedback.
Another study shows that hotels that start responding to reviews receive, on average 12% more reviews, with their ratings increasing between 0.12 and 0.5 stars within 6 months. Ratings are an essential criterion for travelers. In the booking phase, consumers filter through the options by looking at hotels with better scores. On average, it is estimated that a one-star increase can bring 5% to 9% more revenue for a hotel.
A Consistent Reply Strategy Will Help You Differentiate from the Competition
Do you know that the response rate has consistently increased since 2019? Before the pandemic, the average global response rate was 39%. Our latest data for 2022 shows that this number is currently at 44%.
The response rate was calculated based on the reviews that can be responded to, excluding all sources that do not allow responses.
This data shows us two key things:
#1 A review response strategy is no longer desirable; it’s a must.
More hotels are actively managing their reviews. With a clear and consistent response strategy, you are more likely to attract and retain your potential and current guests against the competition.
#2 It’s critical to reply as soon as possible.
When looking at the data, we noticed that some reviews received a reply even a couple of months after they were published. Responding promptly will help you differentiate yourself from other competing hotels.
How Does an Effective Response Strategy Looks Like?
A few elements will help you make the most out of your replies to reviews.
#1 Response Structure
Our recent research on how travelers perceive reviews confirmed that these are the five key things guests expect in the hotel’s response:
💡 5 Key Things To Mention in Your Reply 💡
1. Acknowledge your guests’ experiences.
2. Apologize for any negative experience detailed in the review.
3. Give details on changes you intend to make to fix the issues mentioned.
4. Thank the guest for taking the time to write a review.
5. Invite the guest to return.
#2 Response Immediacy
Try your best and respond to your guest reviews as soon as possible. There isn’t a standard timeframe for this, but ideally, you should respond within 48 hours after receiving the guest review. Always prioritize reported issues and negative feedback.
#3 Response Efficiency
When dealing with many reviews, it can get overwhelming to compose personalized messages for each review and ensure you address every issue flagged. Your staff’s time on writing replies can go elsewhere: focusing on the current guests and improving their experience on the go. That’s why response efficiency is crucial to your response strategy: the faster you can reply – without making any amendments to quality – the easier it will be to handle all reviews and focus on other priorities.
How AI Can Help You Effectively Manage Review Responses
Artificial Intelligence is one of the most discussed topics in every sector impacted by technology. AI emerges as an opportunity for the hospitality industry to optimize and rethink how hotels deliver personalized experiences, optimize operations, and interact with guests.
AI can play a valuable role in helping hotels manage review responses by analyzing and categorizing reviews, generating suggested responses, and assisting in sentiment analysis.
You can significantly reduce the time spent analyzing each review and composing replies using an AI response generator. On the other hand, you might feel reluctant to use automatically generated replies. Technology can take from the human touch, from the attention to detail and personalization a human can bring.
Here’s where TrustYou’s responseAI will help you achieve efficiency and immediacy without making any amendments to your reply structure or tone. With our latest feature, you will reduce the time spent replying while keeping the human touch. responseAI is smart enough to detect a positive or negative review, personalize the message, translate, and just like that – it’s ready to review and send!
With TrustYou’s responseAI generator, you can reduce your reply efforts by up to 75%. responseAI and ChatGPT – What’s the Difference?
You can think of TrustYou responseAI as a technology similar to ChatGPT but specialized in crafting perfect responses to hotel reviews by following best practices for responding to guest feedback.
Using TrustYou responseAI over ChatGPT will help you generate replies that follow industry best practices and produce factually correct responses, as it uses the review as a single source of truth. ChatGPT can generate responses that are still quite generic or contain inaccuracies since it’s pulling information from an industry nonspecific database. Ultimately, this can lead to responses that require manual rewriting, making the process more time-consuming.
From a functionality standpoint, TrustYou responseAI is integrated directly into our platform. There’s no need to copy and paste your review into ChatGPT and then copy a response back into TrustYou – everything is generated in the same place.
6 Reasons You Need TrustYou’s responseAI Generator to Reply to Guest Reviews
With a simple yet effective functionality at its core, responseAI is ultimately about enhancing guest satisfaction in an efficient way. Here are six reasons to use our newest feature:
#1 Save time & money
Respond quickly to your guest reviews using cutting-edge technology, with minimal effort required from your staff.
#2 Prioritize guest experience
Your staff will have more time to focus on the current guests and ensure they have everything they need, thus increasing guest satisfaction and preventing negative feedback.
#3 Personalize your reply
Easily adjust the tone of your message – make it sound more formal or casual. The technology recognizes your guest’s and the hotel’s name, allowing you to personalize your response.
#4 Speak the language of your guests
Automatically translate your reply based on the review language.
#5 Adjust Your Message on the Go
Say goodbye to restrictive templates – keep the human touch by improving or adjusting the text quickly if needed.
#6 Enhance performance and reputation
Increase the response rate by replying to more reviews and boosting your chances of improving your star rating.
Get started now to see how much time and money you can save with responseAI!
Catalina Brinza
Catalina is a social media and data enthusiast. At TrustYou, she’s on the mission to bring the most out of travel and hospitality data. One day, she hopes to experience Japan’s culture to its fullest.
About TrustYou
TrustYou is on a mission to make guest communication and feedback simpler and more productive. All communication channels, together in one place, is the new way of doing business. Today, customers expect instant responses on their preferred communication channels. As a subset of communication, feedback is the foundation to build better products, services and companies.
TrustYou helps companies win through the power of listening and provides a Guest Experience (GX) Platform that makes listening to customers easy, powerful, and actionable. The platform unlocks the potential of guest feedback and helps to:
- Create unlimited opportunities to listen and respond to guests’ needs.
- Understand all reviews across the web and make better business decisions.
- Publish hotel reviews on the website and on Google and allow positive feedback to influence bookings.
TrustYou empowers companies to earn trust, make better decisions, and ultimately, win.
Find more information on TrustYou and our GX platform on www.trustyou.com.