Is A Good Review A Double Payment?

While updating a few things on the hotel website, this morning, I realized something. There is a lot of information on the internet about different businesses. Hotels and the internet have become second nature for a lot of people, and we get a lot of our reservations via online bookings. Even though we have a pretty decent rate for online reservations, there’s a few things that I simply cannot do anything about.

When people make reservations for any hotel online, they spend a lot of time looking at reviews from other people that have stayed there. Some of the reviews are good, and some of them are bad. In my mind (maybe I’m wrong) people would be more likely to leave a review of their stay at a hotel if they had a “bad” experience, rather than a good one. This is probably true for other businesses and services that allow people to give “reviews”, also.

I’ve stayed at many hotels, used a lot of different services, and done business with a lot of people in my lifetime. The only times that I ever remember leaving a review or saying something online about a business is when I’ve had a bad experience. Maybe it’s a way of “getting back” at a business for not being what I thought they should be. Maybe when I’ve had “really good” experiences, I thought it was just to be expected, and that leaving good feedback or a review for something that I paid for would serve as sort of a “double payment”, or something.

What really got me thinking about this was the fact that since the reviews are out there, there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it. There is no way to prove that what the reviewer said is true. There is also no way to prove that the reviewer had actually ever even been a guest (or customer). There is also no way to get rid of reviews (good or bad) that are so out of date that they don’t even apply, anymore.

Do the negative comments for a hotel come from truly unhappy guests? Most likely, yes. Like I said, I would be more apt to leave a review if I had a bad experience, myself. Do the positive comments come from truly “happy” guests? That’s hard to say. It seems a lot less likely. There is a possibility of “shill” hotel reviews, I’m sure.

I will say that since I work at the front desk of a hotel, I hear from guests “all the time”. As in any business, there are complaints and compliments. Taking care of the problems is a big part of any job. Not all of the problems can be handled the way that the customers “thinks” they should be handled. Taking the compliments for something that I had little or no part in happens a lot, though, also. We do get thank you notes from people who have stayed at the hotel, but I may have never seen or talked to them, personally.

Have you ever left a “good” review of a business, just for the purpose of leaving a good review?