The Online Reviews your Hotel HAS to be Monitoring

Your hotel's online reviews can make and break you when it comes to guests booking a hotel online. When searching for hotels, the last little push that could convince the potential guest to book a room with you could be what other past guests are saying about you online. On the other end of the spectrum, a guest could look up your hotel's reviews at the beginning of their search. What they find could either convince them to consider your hotel or move on to your competitor. This will give them the confidence they need to book the hotel.

Keeping an eye on your hotel's reviews has many positive impacts, including:

• Give you a sense of how your guests perceive the hotel
• Make you aware of areas that may need improvement, whether it's customer service or a maintenance issue
• Let you know what guests enjoy the most about your hotel
• Give you insight as to what attractions, events, etc. are bringing people to your hotel
• Let you know what your hotel is doing well
• Bonus: Monitoring the reviews of your competition from time to time can give you insight into what your competitors are doing well and where they are lacking.

Here are the top online reviews that your hotel should be monitoring.

Tripadvisor

This is the one channel that every hotel already knows they should be watching. It is often the first place that travelers check reviews and the ones that they trust the most.

Yelp

It's no surprise that Tripadvisor and Yelp are at the top of the list. These are the two most well-known review sites and. While Yelp is mainly used to provide reviews for restaurants, it is so top-of-mind for many consumers that they will also check this channel for hotels. Plus, if your hotel has a restaurant, you want to make sure to monitor its reviews on this channel.

Facebook

Regardless of how "cool" Facebook may seem to people, it is still one of the most used social media networks on the planet. It currently has over

Google My Business

Though reviews are no longer directly shown on Google+, Google reviews are still critical to monitor. They show up directly on Google search when someone searches instantly for your hotel, and the reviews also show up on Google Maps.

OTAs

Even though the goal of your online marketing strategy is to take back your share from the OTAs, it's still important to keep an eye on the reviews that customers are leaving on popular OTA sites. You can always gain insightful insights into what your customers think of their experience at your hotel. The number of reviews left on these sites also tend to be high because the OTAs have the customer's information and will repeatedly send reminders asking them to review their stay.

OTA sites to monitor reviews should include:

• Booking.com
• Expedia
• Hotels.com
• Travelocity

Others:

These are the most popular channels for guests to leave reviews in the United States. If your hotel caters to a different country, you may want to have someone on the property keeping an eye out for the most popular review site(s) of that country. For example, if your hotel mainly services travelers from China, one of the channels you would want to make sure to keep an eye on is Ctrip.

Protecting and maintaining your online reputation is vital. You could show up number 1 in search, run thousands of dollars worth of ads, and have a superb social media strategy, but travelers could still choose not to book a room with you because your reviews are not up to par. While you can't control all the reviews that your hotel receives, what you can do is monitor reviews and provide timely responses to customers. Make sure that your hotel is responding to all reviews that contain some complaints. This can build trust with potential guests, letting them know that the hotel cares about its customer's concerns.