There’s no better way of tempting a traveller to book than showing them reviews from happy guests who’ve stayed at your place. You may already know how to collect reviews, but here’s a bit more about how the reviews process works from start to finish.
- Your guest can write a review via your Holiday Lettings or TripAdvisor advert. When they click on the button to write a review, they’ll be taken to a form on TripAdvisor.
- Your guest will start by adding a few details such as the name on the booking and their date of stay. This is so you can verify the reviewer actually stayed at your home (more on this later). The rest of the form guides them through completing their review.
- When the guest hits Submit at the bottom of the form, they’ll be asked to sign in to TripAdvisor. If they don’t have a TripAdvisor account, they can create one for free or sign in via Facebook or Google.
- Your guest will know if they’ve submitted their review correctly because they’ll receive an email from TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor checks the review to make sure it meets the posting guidelines. This can take a little while, particularly during busy seasons.
- When the review is ready, you’ll get an email letting you know. You’ll then have five days to verify that the guest stayed. Log in to your Holiday Lettings account and go to Properties > Manage your reviews. You won’t be able to read the review at this point (more on this in ‘Need to know info’ below). If you don’t verify the review within five days, it will be posted to your advert automatically.
- The review will be displayed on your Holiday Lettings advert and your TripAdvisor advert. The review will appear on your Holiday Lettings advert as soon as you’ve verified it (or when the five days is up). It might take a little longer for your TripAdvisor advert to update and display the review.
- You can post a response to the review by logging into your account and going to Properties > Manage your reviews. Find out more about responding to reviews.
Top tip! If you haven’t written a review on TripAdvisor before, it’s a good idea to have a go. You can review accommodation, restaurants and attractions: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/
Need to know info
Why do guests have to sign in to write a review? The vast majority of websites that allow people to comment now require some kind of sign in. This is to stop any misuse of the system, take away absolute anonymity and make sure that owners can’t post fake reviews about their own home.
Why can’t reviews be read before being posted? To make sure that the reviews posted are a true reflection of other guests’ experiences, you’re not able to read the review before it goes live.
If you’ve received criticism and respond well to the review, that’s just as appealing to potential guests than having lots of glowing 5/5 reviews. It shows you’re willing to take on board feedback and make improvements. You’ll be able to see the guest’s name and their holiday dates before the review goes live. More about verifying reviews.
Where’s the review? If your guest has told you that they’ve written a review, you’ve been waiting for a while and you’ve not received it, make sure that:
- Your guest wrote the review on the correct advert.
- They received a notification email from TripAdvisor thanking them for their review (if they didn’t receive this, they may not have completed the review properly or signed into TripAdvisor).
- The guest is aware of the posting guidelines. They can check the status of their own review by visiting their TripAdvisor account.
If, after checking the above, you still haven’t received the review it could be that it didn’t meet the guidelines. In that case, your guest can try and resubmit their review.
Check out our help section for more information on how reviews work.
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