How to Get Your Guests to Recommend Your Holiday Rental
Discover the secrets to getting guests to recommend your holiday rental
November 2024
Word of mouth is the best form of marketing — but how do you get guests to recommend your holiday rental? We have a look at the best ways to grow your business through recommendations and reviews.
The importance of good holiday rental reviews
Online reviews can make or break a business. Increasingly, customers want to read about other people’s experiences before they book something. A business with no reviews at all is often seen as a red flag.
There are a few things that it’s important to think about when it comes to reviews:
- Good reviews are organic. Savvy customers realise that some businesses essentially demand five-star reviews. A slew of one-liner five-star reviews that contain no helpful information won’t help anyone. Instead, people want to see thoughtful commentary, preferably with photos.
- Fake reviews are easy to spot and will appear as red flags. A holiday rental that has only been in business for a few months but has managed to rack up thousands of reviews will look suspicious.
- Some cultures review things differently. For example, Japanese people are notorious for seeing a three-star review as positive, while Western business owners will see it as ruinous.
- Bad reviews happen from time to time. You can mitigate their effects by leaving a polite comment in response. If the good reviews outweigh the bad, your business shouldn’t suffer.
How to encourage holiday rental reviews
Given the importance of holiday rental recommendations, most landlords want to encourage guests to write a review. However, there’s a delicate balance to achieve here. You never want your guests to feel pressured or uncomfortable. If they choose to write a review by themselves, they’re more likely to give the kind of detailed information that other travellers look for. On the other hand, if they think you’re demanding a review from them, they may leave a low-quality one-liner. Here are some common strategies for soliciting feedback from guests:
Ask guests in person for a review
This is a tricky one and should be approached with care. It’s only really a good idea if you’ve already built up a rapport with your guests, so the subject comes up organically. If you’ve barely spoken to them, and you ask them to leave a review while they’re checking out, they may be put off. After all, a landlord standing over you demanding, “Recommend my holiday rental!” doesn’t tend to inspire confidence.
Leave a feedback form in your rental
An internal feedback form is just that — internal. It’s designed for you to measure guest satisfaction in holiday rentals, learn from the comments, and develop your business accordingly. However, you may want to add a link or QR code and politely request an online review.
Send a follow-up email
This is a really common and helpful strategy. A day or two after guests have checked out, send an automated email. Make sure it doesn’t come across as being too pushy. Tell them you hope that they’ve had a good stay, and give a link to a review site. One link is enough; even the happiest guest may not want to leave reviews on Facebook, TripAdvisor, and Google.
Remember that holiday rental portals will usually send their own follow-up email, too, so don’t spam. A single email from you is enough.
Developing a holiday rental referral programme
Referrals can be even more effective than reviews. Unlike reviews, which are the opinions of strangers, referrals come from people that travellers know and trust. If you can encourage former guests to make holiday rental suggestions to your friends, you’re in luck.
A referral programme is a great way to do this. Give former guests their own unique referral link or code. Whenever a new customer makes a booking using that code, the former guest should receive some kind of incentive. To sweeten the deal, you may want to give a perk to the new guest, too. Here are a few choices that might work:
- A voucher for a discount on a future stay. This is a particularly good idea because it means that your customer has to return to your property to take advantage of the deal!
- A small gift of cashback, which you can send to the guest’s PayPal account or similar.
- A special deal to be used on a future stay: a welcome drink, spa treatment, voucher for a free meal, and so on.
You might even create a tiered programme. For instance, one referral gets a free drink, the next one gets a free meal, and the next a free night’s stay.
When setting up a referral programme, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Firstly, you need to lay out your terms and conditions very clearly. Are your perks stackable or not? Don’t make discounts stackable, or guests could potentially claim extremely cheap nights — and get annoyed if you don’t honour them.
You should also consider if there is a limit to the number of referrals someone can make. Common ways of limiting rewards are a hard limit or a soft limit based on time (for example, you’ll honour up to five referrals in a single year).
The golden rule of holiday rental reviews and recommendations
Remember, no matter what strategies you use to encourage reviews and recommendations, your guest needs to have a good experience. There’s no point asking an unhappy guest to give you a review.
The absolute best way to use reviews to advertise your holiday home is when they come up organically. You want the people who rent your holiday flat or house to feel so happy with the experience that they spontaneously choose to leave you a review.
Make sure your property looks good and that everything is clean and in working order. The reality should match the photos on your holiday rental website — you don’t want anyone walking in and immediately feeling disappointed. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. A photo of a dirty bathroom in an online review is going to hurt more than a bad review with no pictures.
As well as providing a pleasant environment, this means going above and beyond to make sure your guests are happy. Think about the kind of customer service you would want from a holiday rental, and make sure you offer it to your guests. If you can meet their special needs, do so.
To ensure that guests are having a good time, email them or a text message a day after they’ve checked in. Tell them you just want to check that everything is okay, and ask if they require anything else. Being available and happy to help can make a huge difference and will inspire guests to leave positive reviews.