After you’ ve completed these audits, it’ s time to put your plan into action, both behind a screen and behind the front desk.
Thoughtful, personalized responses should highlight unique selling features and create a compelling picture of your hotel’ s guest experience. A well-crafted response doesn’ t just acknowledge a review— it influences the next potential guest.
Review content: Train staff to encourage detailed guest stories in reviews. While incentivizing name mentions isn’ t allowed, team members can invite feedback in authentic ways such as online reviews.
OWN YOUR BRAND VOICE Building and maintaining an on-brand, consistent tone of voice across engagement touchpoints is essential for good brand reputation. Consistency shows that you care about connecting with every one of your guests in an authentic way to drive an outstanding guest experience.
First, know your audience. Understand their needs, preferences and communication style. Next, build( or engage a third party to build) a brand personality and tone of voice guide for your hotel. Brand personality guides typically outline core traits( friendly and warm, respectful and thorough, clever and direct) to guide your tone across all channels.
The tone of voice guidelines should stem from your brand personality traits. These guidelines typically include language style( concise, formal, conversational), specific word choices and words to avoid(“ coupon,”“ hotel chain”) and examples.
Apply your tone of voice guidelines consistently wherever you are communicating. Indeed, context matters( the type of things you communicate about in response to a comment on Facebook often differ from the kinds of things you would say in an email newsletter), but dependability in your tone of voice— no matter which team or agency partner is doing the writing— will build trust and brand equity.
BUILD A STORYTELLING CULTURE Review generation and social content curation extend beyond the marketing team. Every front-line team member plays a role in shaping and amplifying the guest experience.
Operations & Experience Teams: Chefs, bartenders, and staff can create and photograph share-worthy moments making it easier for guests to capture content organically. With great phone cameras, any team member can capture quality content.
Front-of-House Staff: Encourage deeper guest conversations beyond“ How was your stay?” Train staff to ask strategic questions like,“ What amenities are you enjoying most?” This invites storytelling— imagine a guest raving,“ Your beds! I finally caught up on sleep and wish I could take the mattress home!” Wouldn’ t that type of feedback serve as a great inspiration for a social post or online review?
FIX FAST, WIN REVIEWS Guest conversations do more than generate positive reviews— they help with service recovery. When frontline teams build trust, they can address concerns before they become negative reviews or viral complaints.
May / June 2025 hotelsmag. com 53