Online Marketing • April 14, 2014 • Shubham Satyarth
In our previous post, we discussed the importance of TripAdvisor listing for tour and activity operators. In this one, we will talk about techniques that will help you make the most of your listing.
To get started, you will have to create a listing on TripAdvisor here. You will see options to register as a Hotel, a Vacation Rental, a Restaurant or an Attraction. Choose Attraction and proceed. After that, it’s a fairly self-explanatory registration process that eventually creates your business listing on TripAdvisor.
With the basic setup done and content uploaded you are now ready to start rolling. Follow these 5 simple tips to effectively utilize your TripAdvisor account:
The best way to collect reviews is to ask! And the best way to ask is to send a nicely worded email after a traveler has experienced your tour/activity. Do not forget to include the TripAdvisor link in your email so that it is easy for your customers to follow the link and write a review. Ideally, you should automate this entire process so that you never miss out on sending these emails or miss out on customers in your emails.
You should also use TripAdvisor’s review widgets. By putting these widgets on your website, you encourage (and make it super convenient for) your customers to write reviews. TripAdvisor also gives you the option of embedding a review form in your post-trip emails, but you will have to pay for this feature.
TripAdvisor allows you to reply back to your reviewers. Make the most of it. And how should you respond? For starters, make use of these response guidelines laid down by TripAdvisor. Responding to a positive review is a fairly straightforward task (although you must respond). But when dealing with a negative review, you have to be extremely careful. Check out how this operator has tactfully managed a poor review.
The world is not perfect. Although TripAdvisor has set up a very strong review moderation process to weed out fraudulent reviews, some inappropriate reviews might still sneak through. As the business owner, the onus is on you to constantly monitor your reviews and immediately report any inappropriate content to TripAdvisor. Go through these review guidelines and report any review that does not meet these guidelines.
NEVER resort to fake or paid positive reviews. TripAdvisor clearly states that:
Reviews of accommodations, attractions and restaurants should only be written by TripAdvisor members that have had a customer service experience that they want to share with the community
There are many Companies that specialize in submitting fake reviews to boost your standing. Stay away from them! Keep in mind that TripAdvisor has put in place a strong mechanism to remove this “Organized Boosting” and if it’s determined that your business has indulged in such a practice, TripAdvisor will not only reduce your popularity index by several pages, it will also place a “large red penalty notice” along with your listing. Nothing will hurt you more.
TripAdvisor offers you a number of free online marketing tools. We have already talked about the review widgets. Some other useful tools and widgets are:
Check out the full list here. And check out some examples of their usage below: