Theme: Travel sites

Theme: Travel sites

• If you’re in the travel industry, it’s important to pay attention to travel review sites. More and more customers are turning to online reviews for every purchase decision, whether it’s finding a flight, a restaurant to try in a new city, or a hotel to stay at. Here are the travel review sites that you need to know in 2021. 

Google  While Google is known first and foremost as a search engine, it’s also one of the biggest travel companies in the world.  Google search gives customers in-depth information about hotels including pricing, location,  and customer reviews. Here’s what popped up when I typed in “hotels in Copenhagen”. 

Because of the visibility of these search results, it’s important that your business looks great on Google. Here’s how you can start collecting more Google reviews. 

Facebook 

• Facebook 
• Facebook is the biggest social media site in the world. It’s also the second-biggest review site behind Google. Make sure that your business has a Facebook profile so you can start getting more visibility from Facebook’s more than 2 billion users. 
• Facebook is unique amongst review sites because it does not have a 5-star rating system. Instead, customers get the option to “Recommend” or “Not Recommend” your business. 

• Expedia (Orbitz, Hotels.com, Travelocity) 
• The Expedia Group includes sites like Orbitz, Hotels.com, and Travelocity. These sites together represent a large chunk of the travel review ecosystem. To get your business listed on these sites, visit the Expedia Group’s Lodging Partner Services page. 

• TripAdvisor 
• While TripAdvisor may have been eclipsed by sites like Google and Facebook in recent years, the site is still relevant. TripAdvisor contains 25% of all hotel reviews. Check out our in-depth guide to TripAdvisor reviews. 

• Yelp 
• Yelp isn’t just for restaurants anymore. While the site is no longer the giant in the review world that it used to be, it’s still one of the biggest players in the ecosystem behind Facebook and Google. The site has reviews for businesses of all industries including hotels. Check out our guide to Yelp reviews. 

• Bookings (Booking.com, Kayak, and HotelsCombined) 
• If you’re a property owner looking for bookings- Booking.com is one place where you need to get listed. Booking.com boasts over 29 million listings, including hotels, apartments, and vacation homes. 
• Booking.com also owns Kayak and HotelsCombined, two more travel sites that allow travelers to compare rates of different hotels and find options for transportation. 

• Airbnb 
• While Airbnb is primarily a booking platform, it also contains guest reviews. If you have a listing on Airbnb, it’s important to keep track of what your guests are saying on this platform. Check out our guide to Airbnb reviews. 

• Hostelworld
• As you might guess from the name, Hostelworld allows travelers to find and book hostels, hotels, and bed & breakfasts all over the world. Start listing your business on Hostelworld to start getting bookings from more travelers all around the world. 

• Foursquare 
• While Foursquare started as an app where customers could check-in to businesses, it’s now one of the most popular review sites on the Internet. Foursquare has more than 50 million monthly active users. 

• Best practices for review sites 
• So now that you know the most important travel review sites, what can you do to attract more customers to your business? Here are some best practices that will help you take full advantage of each one of these sites.

Send customers review requests (when you can) 

• Send customers review requests (when you can) 
• Remember, the more feedback that you get, the better. Sites like Google and Facebook encourage businesses to send review requests to customers. After all, encouraging your customers to leave reviews can lead to more balanced feedback. Usually, only customers who feel that they had strongly negative experiences are motivated to leave a review. 
• Of course, not every one of the sites mentioned above encourages review solicitation. In a controversial move, Yelp ended review solicitation back in 2017. Sending review requests for a site like Airbnb doesn’t make much sense either since Airbnb already sends review requests after the guest’s stay has ended. 

• Monitor your reviews 
• It’s important to keep a close eye on your reviews. A bad review, if left untouched, can dissuade customers from trying your business. So be sure that you’re actively monitoring and responding to these reviews. 
• While it’s tough to monitor reviews across all of these different travel review sites, a tool like Birdeye can make it easy. In the Birdeye dashboard, you can see reviews from 150+ sites. There’s no need to go to individual sites one-by-one. You can even leave responses within the dashboard and watch your response show up on the site where the review was originally posted. 

• Promote your reviews 
• When you get a great review, don’t just leave it there. Share it with the world. Because nobody can sell your business quite like your customer, a great review can be a fantastic piece of marketing. 
• With Birdeye, you can automatically share your 5-star reviews on your social media profiles. Birdeye’s review widget allows you to share a live feed of your reviews on your website, so all of your website visitors can see the opinions of your happy customers.