For a tourism business in Bali, TripAdvisor can matter as much as, or more than, its own website. Guests find the business on TripAdvisor, read the reviews, look at the photos, and may then visit the website to check prices. Some never visit the website at all; they book on the basis of what other travellers have written.
Many owners, however, treat their listing as something outside their control. Reviews arrive, positive or negative, and owners read them with satisfaction or frustration, but take no action.
Meanwhile, TripAdvisor provides owners with a set of free tools, and very few use more than one or two of them.
Which free tools does TripAdvisor offer owners?
Any business can claim its listing through what TripAdvisor calls the Management Center, starting from TripAdvisor's owners page. Once the listing is claimed, the owner can edit the business details, add photos, reply to reviews and obtain widgets and badges for the business website.
Hotels and B&Bs also have access to Review Express, launched by TripAdvisor last year. It allows them to email past guests and invite them to write a review, at no cost.
None of these tools has a cost. Paid options exist, but for most small operators, the free tools alone deliver more than any advertising they are running. The same applies to claiming a Google listing: it is free, routine work, and more useful than much of what businesses pay for.
How should the listing be completed?
Begin with the most basic step, which is also the most frequently neglected.
Many listings show incorrect opening hours, an outdated phone number, a description written years ago, and only photos uploaded by guests. Guest photos are authentic, which is valuable, but they are sometimes of poor quality or show unflattering details. If owners do not add their own photos, guest photos are what prospective customers see first.
The task is straightforward. Complete every field and add quality, recent photos: the boat, the equipment, the rooms, the staff, the view and the food. These should be genuine images, taken by the owner or a competent photographer, rather than stock images. Return every few months to add more, because a listing whose most recent owner photo is three years old suggests that the business is no longer attentive.
The description matters less than many owners assume. Photos and reviews do most of the persuading; the description simply needs to be accurate and state clearly what the business offers.
How can TripAdvisor review widgets be used on a website?
This is the most underused tool.
TripAdvisor allows owners to place widgets on their own website: a box displaying the business's rating and latest reviews, or a badge showing an award. The Certificate of Excellence badge is the most sought after.
Its value lies in credibility. A guest arriving on a business website has no reason to accept the business's own claims, such as "Best dive shop on the island!" A live widget displaying reviews from an independent site provides external confirmation.
It also creates continuity. People who read reviews on TripAdvisor and then visit the website see the same reviews there, and the site appears connected to the reputation they have just read about.
The drawback is speed. Some widgets are heavy and slow down pages, which matters when guests are on the other side of the world. We recommend placing them where trust matters most, such as the booking page and the homepage, and omitting them elsewhere.
Should every review receive a reply?
Yes, whether positive or negative. This practice requires discipline, and it is where differences between businesses are most visible.
Most owners who reply do so only to negative reviews, often defensively, sometimes impolitely and occasionally in capital letters. Such replies never help.
The effective approach is to reply to every review. Positive reviews warrant a brief, personal thank-you that mentions a specific detail from the review, so that it does not read as a template. Negative reviews warrant a calm reply that acknowledges the problem, explains briefly if an explanation is relevant, states what has changed and offers to continue the conversation directly. Arguing should be avoided.
The key consideration is the audience for the reply. It is written primarily for the next hundred people who will read it, rather than for the reviewer. A calm, fair response to a harsh review often does more for a business than five positive reviews, because it shows how the business behaves when a problem occurs. Readers understand that problems happen; they want assurance that the business will address them.
Which practices make reviews manageable?
- Assign one person responsible for replies, who checks two or three times a week.
- Do not reply on the same day to a review that provokes a strong reaction.
- Invite past guests to write reviews regularly, so that a single negative review is not the only recent one.
Will TripAdvisor remain the only review site that matters?
For now, TripAdvisor is the leading platform for travel, and it carries considerable weight for hotels, restaurants and activities. We do not expect it to remain the only site travellers consult, however. Google has been integrating reviews into Maps and its new Google My Business listings, which appear directly in search results, before users reach TripAdvisor. Booking sites also have their own reviews.
We therefore recommend treating these measures as a set of practices rather than a TripAdvisor-specific technique: a complete listing, recent photos, external validation on your own site and a calm reply to every review. These practices apply on any platform your guests use, and they are the first element we review in any local SEO engagement, before any spending on advertising.
We recommend reviewing your own listing this week, counting the unanswered reviews and replying to each of them.