Quote from @Tom Dieringer:
Quote from @Jonathan Greene:
Whenever I had a max complainer who uttered a word about any review not at five stars, I immediately comped their stay, apologized, and made sure they didn't write the review (even when they were a scammer or crazy person). A 1-star scammer review isn't worth the money for the stay.
Jonathan, how do you "make sure" they don't write a bad review? I've dealt with thousands of reviews in my other companies, and I get how you increase the odds of not getting a bad review by comping, but there's always a couple crazys who still give a bad review. And if you make it a quid pro quo, don't you run the risk of violating the OTA's policy of paying to alter reviews?
Next, and again my current experience is in a different industry but one that's a highly dependent on Google reviews and ratings, I've found that there's always a break-even point where "paying someone off" doesn't provide enough of a return on the payoff. I could see fully comping 1-2 nights at low season rates, particularly if one doesn't have a lot of reviews yet, but would you, as an established host with tons of reviews, comp a full week or more of a prime season stay? Sorry for the huge questions. :D
Yeah, nothing is absolute and you honestly need a couple crazies so you can respond calmly to show you are not the one who lost it. We used to try to offer to comp and cancel right away if they were a pain so their stay would be eliminated, but I don't know if you still can do that. I wasn't suggesting in any way paying someone off. I comped their stays because they were nuts and I didn't want to deal with them. Usually, they just want that and will stop, but there are always some outliers and sometimes it is our fault and our job is to respond and correct and accept the review.
Your second point is fair too. I was thinking of early operators who can't really afford a bad review. If you have 100 5-star reviews and you get a crazy, it doesn't move the needle much. Again, we are talking about unwarranted reviews, not true 3- or 4-star reviews. I think you have to own them if the people were nice and respectful.
One thing I've found is that you have to specifically remind them in the beginning, middle, and the end, that you want to provide a 5-star stay to result in a 5-star review. Some people think a 4-star is good. I appreciate the comments, those were good things to expand on.
In my on-market business, we deal with crazy reviewers all the time on Zillow or Google and on Zillow, if they were a client, you have to eat it and respond. Owner response is the key to "bad" reviews in my opinion.
