The TripAdvisor Popularity Ranking ranks hotels and other businesses based on the number, quality and freshness of their reviews. The more ‘popular’ a hotel is based on these factors, the better its ranking position whenever travellers search for properties in that geographical area.
While securing the number one spot in the Popularity Ranking isn’t always realistic, every step you move up the rankings ladder increases your visibility and improves the probability that guests will find your hotel, read your reviews, and decide to give you a shot.
Looking to boost your rankings on the world’s number one travel review site? Here are 4 strategies to try today.
Optimise For Engagement
Guests planning their breaks online have a huge array of marketing messages to sort through. If you want to stand a chance of them choosing you over your competitors, you’ve got to make sure your brand gets heard above the noise with an engaging, useful and attractive TripAdvisor listing. This should include professional, high quality photos and concise but persuasive copy that highlights your services and amenities.
Optimising your property listing with relevant keywords will help you get found easily by travellers looking for what you offer. Tracking your performance and running A/B tests will help you fine tune your listing for greater success.
Promote Your Listing
If you want to climb the TripAdvisor rankings you’ve got to encourage a steady stream of reviews, and if you want to do that, you’ve got to get proactive in promoting your presence on the site.
You can drive reviews from your website by embedding a TripAdvisor widget, include links to TripAdvisor in your email marketing campaigns and even print out reminder cards and flyers to leave in guest rooms or hand out at reception.
Create and Personalise Review Requests with Review Express
The TripAdvisor Review Express tool allows you to create and send out emails specifically designed to encourage guest reviews. For hotels with an eye on their popularity ranking, it’s a useful tool which integrates well with most property management systems. However, that doesn’t mean you should simply upload your contact database and leave the rest of the work to be automated for you.
Personalise your templates and review requests to drive engagement. Use guest surveys and questionnaires to identify those contacts that are likely to leave favourable reviews and those that may have issues to resolve first.
Don’t forget: you know your customers best. TripAdvisor’s automation tools are a useful way to drive feedback, but it’s how you use them that will really help you climb the site’s internal search rankings.
Respond to Guest Feedback
One sided conversations are the death-knell of any relationship, and that includes your relationship with your guests. If you want to create a great customer experience and drive lots of digital word of mouth, your hotel should make it a policy to acknowledge every piece of feedback given by every guest.
No one is keen to leave a review on a page where the business themselves appear to have checked out and fail to address customer issues or concerns. In fact, TripAdvisor stats show that holiday properties that respond to feedback consistently enjoy better engagement levels and are 21% more likely to receive a booking enquiry than those that remain silent.
So, if you want to boost your popularity ranking, take time to write management responses to reviews. Follow up and resolve complaints, and say thank you for those who left their thoughts on your business – whether they sang your praises or expressed a few niggles with their stay.
How do you manage your hotel’s Popularity Ranking on TripAdvisor? Let us know in the comments below!
RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:
- 5 TripAdvisor Tips To Try Now
- 5 Smart Ways to Drive More Online Reviews
- Why Personalized Content is Key To More Direct Bookings
