Business Website Advice

I recommend no public response to positive comments on Trip Advisor re your accommodation, but yes do email your private appreciative thank you . 

Don’t tread on their space. It’s not the culture of their prime users. Why not write a management response on TA? It’s about how travellers use Trip Advisor - in the first place it is for them, user to user, not for marketing your business.  BTW you maybe encouraged  to respond to every comment, but I question the motive.

Leave good things be.  That was my response to an accommodation owner who asked my advice.  She had received several well written, detailed, thoughtful Trip Advisor comments and wondered if the TA ‘management reply’ was an appropriate response.  I told her write a private thank you, stay out of TA for positive comments.

Be seen as trustworthy, not a marketer. Because it is perceived as a highly trustworthy travellers’ site - a user to user advice forum  - Trip Advisor gets very heavy use. International and domestic US and UK travellers check in with TA before making their final arrangements with whomever that might be. I didn’t once in the US, got burnt, came home and wrote about the bad experience with believing over-hyped website content.

Before travellers buy, they usually consult TA for what ‘other people like me’ think about the place before parting with a deposit etc, because they’ve been burnt too often by the hype of one-eyed websites or their lies of omision.  

DO NOT RISK SOUNDING LIKE A HYPE MACHINE yourself, thus, unless you got A+ in writing thank you’s as a kid, leave good enough alone on the public forum. Send a private thank you to show your genuine appreciation for their positive report including a warm welcome back.

Sound authentic, genuine and human.  That should be easy, I’d bed that’s in part why they wrote you a good report.

Monitor daily.  Whether you encourage comments on your website, Finda in NZ, any other directory or Trip Advisor besure to monitor daily.  Yes daily.

Negative comments - they require a quick public response. If you do them well they can even bring you business.  See my next post.

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