As a hospitality professional, have you ever read through your properties reviews and seen somewhere you thought, “I would have handled that so differently” or “that employee made the right decision” or even “should we do this next time to give the guest a better experience?” 

Guest reviews are a great way to get direct feedback on how the guest experience is and maybe even find out if an interaction you had specifically was handled well. 

If you’ve never looked through your property’s reviews before, or you have and you weren’t sure what to take away from them, here are a few ideas for both management and non-management roles. 

Management roles

In management roles, you are probably used to looking through reviews more often than other roles in your organization. It’s a great way to find out if your property is living up to the standards you set, find out what employees are doing a great job and where there is room for improvement.

If you see negative guest reviews on the property itself….

Say you are reading through the reviews, and you see a guest, or a few, mention that the valet parking is disorganized and confusing for guests. You can take that feedback and meet with the valet staff to find out where they think guests are getting confused and how to improve the process. 

Or maybe some guests mention the layout of the property to find the fitness center or the dining area. You can add some more signage or make sure that your front desk staff gives the guests a map or clearly explain where the amenities are throughout the property. 

Take every negative review as an opportunity to make improvements.

If you see feedback on an employee….

If you see guests talking about positive experiences with employees, make sure as a manager to give those employees a shoutout, both in person and through an internal communication method as well. You want to reinforce those positive interactions with that employee and the rest of the team to continue getting more similar interactions with future guests. 

If there are guest reviews that mention a negative interaction with employees then you also want to make sure to talk to that employee (if you are able to figure out which employee it was) or talk to all of the employees (if you are unable to figure out who that employee was) and talk through why it was an unsuccessful interaction and what actions can be taken in future situations to avoid repeating the interaction. 

All positive reviews, whether on the property, employee, amenity, etc… should be shared with your team to reinforce positive interactions and help build employee loyalty and a positive work environment to keep everyone excited to come to work!

Non-management roles

As a non-management employee, maybe you’ve never looked at the reviews for your property but there are a lot of reasons why you should! 

Improve as an employee

Even if there are no reviews specifically about you, you can see if there are reviews about interactions guests had with other employees, and learn what worked well, what could be done better so you can improve your own interactions with guests. Do not use this as a way to criticize your coworkers, however, simply use it as a tool for improvement. 

Come up with new ideas or solutions

While you are reading through the reviews, if you see guests commenting on inefficient processes or things that need to be improved, you can come up with a solution to make the guest experience better and propose the idea to your manager. 

This will help you stand out as an employee and show your passion for hospitality hopefully helping to fast track you for a promotion. 

Reviews are a great opportunity to make improvements where they might be needed, or recognize the team for the great job they are doing. Make sure to take advantage of the feedback you recieve.