Using Surveys to Increase Travel Review Ratings

Hotels really feel at the mercy of travel reviews these days. Sure, you can improve service and hope it trickles down into better rankings, but beyond that most hotels don’t feel that they have much control in the process.

You may be surprised to know that pushing out guest surveys is associated with a significant improvement in scores. B&B Hotels, for example reports 7% higher scores coming from TrustYou surveys. And these survey responses are coming in bulk - B&B Hotels has increased its total number of new reviews by 18,000 using TrustYou's surveys.

Here’s how it works: Answers from TrustYou surveys are treated as a source of reviews, so they impact the data in Meta-Reviews and the overall TrustScore. Additionally, survey input that hotels receive can be pushed out to third parties, such as TripAdvisor or Holidaycheck, increasing rankings and visibility on those sites. And we’ve discovered that one reason travelers give better scores on surveys is because the hotels have solicited feedback. It tells them that you care, and as a result, hotels also receive more detailed information from guests. It’s a win-win-win.

There are, however, some best practices for using surveys to gain visibility and improve ratings. In fact, we’ve written a whole guide to Survey Best Practices for Hotels. Inside you’ll find out what the perfect length for a survey is (when they get too long response rates drop), what the right flow is for an effective survey, and what kind of wording and designs work best.

So if you’re feeling buried under the weight of third-party travel reviews, consider surveys a way to lift the burden—guests appreciate it if you do it right, and your scores will undoubtedly start climbing.