So far, I haven't actively encouraged guests to post reviews - partly because I've been extremely busy and partly because I haven't decided on wording, guidance on reviews etc. If I get it wrong, it could create more negative review scores (I see anything less than 5* as negative, although I accept that others may see things differently).
I'm thinking about a "Please Review Us" page in our guest information packs. I will definitely start it with "If you enjoyed your stay ..." - in theory, if people didn't enjoy their stay, they won't bother posting a review. Yes, I know it won't stop all negative reviews, but ....
I'm thinking about guidance on reviews being something like this:
5* = the property was as described, with the facilities and amenities listed and in the location marked in the listing
4* = you were disappointed
3* = you want us to burn in hell
Ok, so maybe that guidance needs a little bit of work!
Something I already do (in our guest information packs) is ask guests to report any problems, anything not working *immediately* so that we can fix it *immediately* - we say that it isn't helpful to them, to us or to the next guests if the first we know is when the next guest reports it or we find out about it 2 weeks later in a review. We know this works fairly well - most guests do report any problems immediately. Most of the time we can fix problems / replace things very quickly, often within the hour.
Of course, there are always going to be those guests that say nothing at the time but post it in a review 2 weeks later .... we can't win every time, but we do our best!
