The Importance of TripAdvisor’s New Full Review Form

TripAdvisor alleviated its review process more than ever last week when the popular travel website released its newest widget for hotels. The widget is called the Full Review Form. It is an excellent addition to TripAdvisor’s pre-existing widgets that encourage users to leave reviews with an inset on the hotel’s website itself. Before this new widget was released, the only options available let users start the review process but made them navigate to the TripAdvisor website to finish and post the review. With the Full Review Form, reviewers can fill out an entire TripAdvisor review without ever leaving the hotel’s website.

This new plugin aims to be more effective in garnering reviews. Since users won’t have to navigate to a different site , they can quickly rate the business. They can leave a note about the property without hesitation or inconvenience. It is typically considered poor etiquette to ask a customer flat out for a review.  This widget can have an even more significant impact. This is because a customer will be more likely to leave a review on his own instead of being used as a clear promotional vehicle. From TripAdvisor’s official press release:

“TripAdvisor’s new Full Review Form tool helps businesses collect more reviews and opinions right from their websites and make this feedback available before our large community of travelers,” said Christine Petersen, president of TripAdvisor for Business. “Research shows that 81 percent of travelers find user reviews important when determining which hotel to stay at during their trip, and nearly half won’t book a property if it doesn’t have reviews on sites like TripAdvisor.”

The Full Review Form widget only reiterates the ever-growing importance of reviews in the travel industry. With this potential increase in hotel reviews, it is also essential that a hotel’s management monitors and responds accordingly to select reviews. A recent Forrester and TripAdvisor study revealed the following insightful statistics about online reviews:

• 71% of travelers think that management responses are important
• 68% of travelers would choose a hotel with management responses over a comparable hotel without them
• 79% of travelers feel reassured to see management responses to negative reviews

Also, a recent custom study from TrustYou found that hotels that respond to online reviews (positive or negative) average 6% higher review scores than hotels that do not! These findings should encourage hoteliers to enhance their strategies for getting reviews. It shoudl also respond to discussions in the digital space. Installing TripAdvisor’s Full Review Form widget is an excellent place to start!