Last week I was on a panel of so called experts and the subject of the presentations was the relevance of reviews and feedback from customers. Two review platforms, Feefo and Reevoo were present and I was speaking on behalf of Feefo, the review company that we are proud to be using.

There were many benefits being bandied about not least the fact that live reviews from customers on your websites were excellent for Search Engine Optimisation…which effectively helps get a higher listing for your website when you search for holidays. This is commercially so important for all companies large or small but for smaller specialists like ourselves it can be crucial for new guests to hear about us.

However, whilst this was extremely important I felt that hearing what your guests really thought of you was far more important because it meant that I could tweak my product or pricing so that my guests would have a better holiday experience. As was the case only last week when a guest of ours left a review on our website, which was effectively a small complaint, but didn’t mention any of their problems whilst in resort. If I hadn’t seen this review I wouldn’t have known what the guest really thought of us. Having seen this genuine review, I was able to call the guest, apologise for our failings, redress the matter immediately and believe it or not the guest has booked with us again….for this year! This potentially could have been a guest that would never have travelled with us again but because they felt that leaving a review was the appropriate action to take, albeit after they came back from their holiday, I was able to see what they really thought of us and was able to change our offering so that the guest felt that we were really taking care of their needs.

Without genuine reviews we will never know what our guests really think of us and we will march on in ignorance. However with guests reviews we can engage properly and hopefully satisfy our customers’ needs in the best possible way. Click here to see what our guests really think of us……..