The COVID-19 situation is having a serious effect on all areas of hospitality. Unfortunately for many hoteliers, this has meant partial or even full closure. For those that do remain open in the midst of crisis or who are located in recovering areas of the world, you will be asking yourselves – how is COVID-19 affecting my hotel’s reputation?

You can understand your guests’ experience at your hotel during this time, and keep track of how the situation is evolving by monitoring the feedback received via online reviews and guest surveys. In this way you can limit damage, clear up uncertainties, or thank guests for their support.

Here are three ways to use your reputation monitoring tools to stay on top of COVID-19 mentions.

1. Detect and continuously monitor 

Semantic analysis is a tool that detects mentions of key concepts within feedback (reviews or survey responses), and assigns them as either positive or negative so hoteliers can understand the impact of specific topics.

To help hoteliers understand the impact that COVID-19 is having on online reputation, ReviewPro created the category ‘Medical & Health’ within the  Semantic Analysis tool. This detects concepts and synonyms in 17 languages related specifically to the Coronavirus (like ‘COVID-19’, ‘pandemic’, and ‘state of emergency’). 

By filtering COVID-19 mentions and saving it as a view, you can ensure that you quickly and clearly see the volume and sentiment (positive or negative) of the reviews and survey responses that include this topic. You can also schedule reports to be sent to specific workgroups or people, so no mentions are missed.

If you are a brand that is working across different areas of the world, or across different parts of the same country, you can also keep an eye on the development region by region. This allows you to take a global view of where the situation is getting better or worse according to feedback from your guests.

2. Respond professionally and quickly

As in any crisis, it’s important to know right away what guests are saying. To ensure you stay informed, you can set alerts for specific concepts and receive an email when they are mentioned. Update your current response strategy to fit these exceptional circumstances. Communicate clearly with everyone on how they should respond to COVID-19 reviews and what escalation processes they should follow in case a guest makes some serious accusations. This will provide a quick and swift response, which is crucial when handling such sensitive crises.

Responding to reviews is now a priority whether positive or negative. If your guests took the time to leave a positive comment, thank them for their support and show appreciation. If your guest is concerned about any aspect of their time at your hotel, escalate to a senior member of staff to take the time to follow up and alleviate any worries as quickly as possible.

Remember that it is not only your guest, but thousands of potential guests that will be looking to be able to regain trust and confidence, ensure you stand out.

3. Proactively reach out with a survey

If surveys are part of your guest experience management strategy, leverage this tool to find out how clients felt during their stay: did they feel well informed? Did they consider enough measures were taken? Was their booking affected by COVID-19? These questions can help you to adjust and improve your strategy or give you an opportunity to apologize if the experience was negative. Make sure that your team has received clear instructions on how to respond and what the escalation processes are in case you receive any negative feedback on your COVID-19 questions.

Keeping yourself and your staff well informed while staying in touch with your guests is more important now than ever. If you would like to speak to any of our team to ensure you have the right tools and strategies in place, don’t hesitate to get in touch.