GREAT question tho… it isn’t easy. It’s overwhelming for to start the process, and it’s very humbling… because if your organization chooses to listen to the legitimate contructive criticism and positive comments, you are in for a cultural change. What you thought was the main value proposition of your hotel may not be as secure as you thought, and areas where you believed operations to be fruitful will turn up gaps and missteps.

If you are earnest, honest, transparent, and empathetic…. it will only help to drive visitors to your site, and revenue to your hotel.

I know it isn’t the best answer, but I hope it helps?

If one of them had been horrible, I would have been on it like white on rice. Or – light brown on couscous – the way I have been cooking lately.

But I have one hotel with a website launch, one property with about a billion updates (hyperbole.. you guessed that, yes?), and have been in meetings securing a bid to manage a 22 room eco-B&B on the Presidio in SF. It’s been insane… and I have been constantly interacting on FB and twitter…. one thing about a place like the Allison is that the value proposition makes people flock to it… unlike some of our other portfolio properties that struggle a bit more for interaction, and ends up being more listening and availability than some mega-brand conversation about the hotel.

But in the end, I think TA and Yelp still drive the most revenue. With the Allison… you have the hotel, and the restaurant, both on yelp and tripadvisor.

Each review, if written personally and relevantly, takes some thought, some research, and some time. It’s hard to sit down and do one at a time, and I note that I “batch” process some of these tasks. While a couple reviews sit for a bit, I wait to get back to it and reply to many, many reviews at once, in one day.

Wilbur Hot Springs in Williams, CA – Yelp and Tripadvisor

Stanford Terrace Inn in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, CA

The oldest reviews for this hotel have been replied to – sort of “oldest first”

This post was mentioned on Twitter by HHotelConsult: So which Tripadvisor reviews should management respond to? http://ow.ly/1pXXG (yup.. all of them)…

At this time, interacting with reviewers and their responses has zero weight on your overall ranking. I hope they are starting to understand that it should be a sign of an involved hotel that is listening and learning. But what do I know? =)

Cheers, thanks for the post.

When I saw this blog entry described on your Twitter feed, I was hoping for a magical explanation of how ownership responses affect our scores vis a vis the TA algorithim. But I’ll settle for having a philosophical service discussion.