Whether you are a restaurant, a bar, a hotel or small business, one thing that can make or break you is the online reviews you garner. I’ve talked about ways to increase your rankings before (you can read that here) but recently a real life experience changed the way I think about reviews and how businesses can take a more active part in getting those positive reviews.
Earlier this summer we took a trip to Morocco. I learned a lot about sales on that trip what I didn’t mention was the way one hotel interacted with us after our trip that proves why they have the best reviews in Fez in a very competitive market. You can read the post about what I learned about online sales here:
Here’s how it went down. We stayed at Riad LaaRoussa in Fez for two nights. We loved it. The views of the old medina combined with the friendly staff and beautiful grounds of the hotel was enough to get our fingers moving on TripAdvisor for a great review. But what happened after we checked out really sealed the deal.
While we were enjoying our stay the staff of the hotel took pictures of us enjoying breakfast and lounging in the garden. We didn’t think much of it, in fact, I just figured they were going to use them on their Facebook and Instagram page. Which alone would have been good practice. But the hotel took it up a notch and actually emailed us a very nice letter thanking us for staying with them in Fez with the pictures attached. In the same email they also sent us the link to write a review at their hotel if we were inclined to. They reminded us of the great time we spent through the pictures and gave us a souvenir. In return our TripAdvisor reviews were glowing!
Why this works?
It’s all about reciprocity. They gave us something which left us with a smile and positive memories and we gave them a glowing review. It was something so simple yet so powerful and something I’d never seen before. I loved it! Because the image was fresh in our email we were also able to upload that image directly to TripAdvisor without thinking twice.
You can also take this same approach at your place of business. By giving something extra to your customers, they are likely to give you something extra in return. Well done LaaRoussa, well done!
