The most visited travel website in the world is TripAdvisor.com (TA). This makes ranking well on TA very important to a business’s bottom line. Studies have shown that a percentage increase in revenue can be directly attributed to an increase in online review scores. This leaves many businesses (especially those in the travel industry – like hotels) wondering how they can increase their TA ranking.
Recently businesses on TA were having issues with their competitors. Solid, long-standing companies that gave consistently great service were suddenly being outranked by newcomers who received a handful of 5-star reviews in a short amount of time. These few 5-star reviews eclipsed the years of great work that reputable businesses had put in to protecting their online reputations. In 2016 TA realized that they needed to make some adjustments to their ranking algorithm. It decided to focus on three main criteria: number of reviews, newness of reviews and of course the average score of reviews.
Number of reviews – Deciding to more heavily weight the number of reviews would help offset newcomers shooting straight to the top of their respective lists by getting only a handful of good reviews. As I browse lists of hotels I will sometimes find properties that have an exceptionally high score, but then realize they only have a dozen reviews whereas their nearest competitors have hundreds if not thousands. I feel much more confident choosing a property that has a consistently good score over a series of hundreds of reviews rather than a hotel that could have had a good opening month with lots of visits from the owner’s friends and family.
Newness of reviews – TA looks for reviews that are current and more heavily favors them. This is pretty logical. If a hotel gave customers 5-star experiences to their guests four years ago, but changed ownership and now refuses to reinvest money to keep its property up to date, then it’s ranking should be negatively affected by the most recent reviews that are likely to be worse. On the other hand, if a restaurant was infamous for bad food and 2-star service a year ago, but hired a new chef and manager, then the more current 5-star reviews should overshadow the older, outdated ones.
Average rating – This is the number from 1 to 5 (with five being the highest) that is assigned to a property by its customer-reviewers. When searching for a place to stay I look for a hotel with 4+ stars. Having worked with many hotels I’ve found that if you just do the basics you can easily receive 4-star reviews, so anything less than that means the property is leaving a lot of basic things undone.
As you can see, to increase your overall TA ranking you need to get a lot of new reviews that are 4 and above. How can you do this? There are a number of both simple and creative strategies you can use to see immediate results. And remember an increase in online review scores directly translates into dollars. If you’re interested in more information about some of the specific strategies you can use to increase your TA score, just shoot me an email at Ask@BransonMan.com and I’ll be happy to correspond with you.