Get Great Guest Reviews

Stephanie Sparks Smith is CEO and Digital Matriarch at Cogwheel Marketing™️ and partner and consultant at Cayuga Hospitality Consultants. Her agency focuses on helping hotel owners and management companies drive incremental exposure and revenue to their websites and online channels through hotel digital marketing and advertising. I recently had the pleasure of talking with Stephanie about her perspective on the impact of guest reviews on marketing. Please listen, and share your feedback and if you enjoy the program, please share with your friends and your associates. Sharing and talking about podcasts with your team is a simple and affordable way to develop and inspire your team. For lots of great resources including Adele's Top Takeaways from this episode, please visit, https://www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews. If you would like more personal attention and assistance to support your team in a Reputation Cultivation Program, please feel free to contact Adele at getgreatreviews@adelegutman.com and we will be happy to help.  Get the Free Guide: Ten Tips To Take Your Team to the Top on TripAdvisor: https://www.adelegutman.com/getthefreeguide  Follow and connect with Adele Gutman: Website: https://www.adelegutman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/ Adele’s Speaker & Consulting Sheet    https://www.adelegutman.com/AdelesSpeakersSheet/  Thanks to our Sponsor!  Thank you to our sponsor Guest Chat! Please visit https://www.guestchat.com/adele to enjoy your hotel's 90-day free trial with no contracts or obligations.  Turbo Boost Your Success with Cogwheel Marketing:  The expertise of Cogwheel Marketing is knowing the intricacies of the branded hotel systems and understanding where brand marketing stops and hotel level marketing begins. Cogwheel Analytics™️ , developed by Cogwheel Marketing, is a hotel digital marketing reporting and BI tool that aggregates data from multiple sources to allow companies to identify trends and opportunities in their online presence. https://cogwheelmarketing.com/ 

Happy Housekeeping Week, Hospitality Stars! Please enjoy this episode of Get Great Guest Reviews with our guest, Lonny Wolfe of The Art of Housekeeping. Lonny shared some ideas on what he does this week and every week, the infuse the spirit of Housekeeping week into the way he works to support his teams every day. Lonny and I know that supporting your team to present a sparkling-clean property is absolutely essential to inspiring five-star reviews and the guest loyalty that comes with it. According to Bain and Company, as reported by Harvard Business Review, it costs 25 times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing customer. Additionally, Therefore, for hoteliers to optimize revenue and maximize profits, we hoteliers need to think of the heart of the house as an extension of our commercial strategy. Lonny is the authority on creating great guest experiences through housekeeping excellence, so please listen to his thoughts directly on the podcast. For lots of great resources including the complete show notes for this episode and more, please visit, https://www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews. Please listen, and share your feedback and if you enjoy the program, please share with your friends and your associates. Sharing and talking about podcasts with your team is a simple and affordable way to develop and inspire your team.  If you would like more personal attention and assistance to support your team in a Reputation Cultivation Program, please feel free to contact Adele at getgreatreviews@adelegutman.com and we will be happy to help.  Follow and connect with Adele Gutman: Website: https://www.adelegutman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/ Adele’s Speaker & Consulting Sheet   Thank you to our sponsor Guest Chat! Please visit https://www.guestchat.com/adele to enjoy your hotel's 90 day free trial with no contracts or obligations. 

When your guests shower your hotel, motel, B&B, restaurant, or vacation rental in 5-star reviews, your guests will do so much of the marketing for you, making your business more visible online, and more enticing by elevating the perceived value of the unique experience you offer.   Today, let’s learn from Kathleen and Amy Smith, who are phenomenal hoteliers and hospitality reputation cultivation experts! Kathleen and Amy own and operate the #1 hotel on Tripadvisor in Saratoga Springs, the Saratoga Arms Hotel, which is celebrating its 25th year in business. Congratulations ladies!   There’s a Gaelic saying to describe the heart of hospitality in Ireland, “cead mílle fáilte,” a hundred thousand welcomes. That authentic Irish spirit of hospitality is in the family DNA of these two women hotel owners, and it is easy to witness their leadership and heartfelt commitment to hospitality reflected in the work of their team. Just take a look at the astonishing 90% of Tripadvisor reviews scores showing enthusiastic 5-star reviews (aka-promoters) and only a pittance of 2.74% of reviews coming in at 3 stars or below (aka-detractors). This is world-class operational excellence and fantastic business savvy!   You’ll definitely want to listen to Kathleen and Amy share their tips on how they do it directly on this episode of Get Great Guest Reviews!   Please visit for a few of my top takeaways from the conversation that you can start using today!    For more resources, including the blog with complete show notes and more, visit: https://www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews     Thank you for listening! If you appreciate this content, please share, comment, and subscribe! Your reviews also help others find us, so thank you in advance for your support.    If you would like a Reputation Renovation or a Reputation Cultivation Program for your hotel or business, please contact Adele Gutman at GetGreatReviews@AdeleGutman.com       

Did you ever dream that your hotel, restaurant, or attraction could be ranked #1 in the USA? Well, dreams do come true when you commit to a proven plan for success.     Consistency, Culture, Communication, Collaboration, and Celebration are just the start of these Inspiring Tips from Matthew Douzuk, General Manager of the Perry Lane Hotel in Savannah, ranked as the #1 Hotel in the USA on Tripadvisor Best of the Best for 2023 as well as #24 in the world!    If you are looking for the path to astonishing results in loyalty, passion, and enthusiasm among your associates and your guests, I promise you if you put these concepts to work at your hotel, restaurant, or any service industry business, you will see remarkable results!   Please listen in and share this thought-provoking conversation with Matthew Douzuk with your colleagues!   For more resources, including the blog with complete shownotes and more, visit: https://www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews     

If you want to learn the inside scoop from a General Manager of a highly rated hotel as to what it actually takes to help a hotel’s team inspire consistent Five Star Reviews from guests, this is the podcast for you! The Bardessono Hotel and Spa in Yountville, California, managed by Remington Hospitality, boasts a stellar 5 out of 5 Stars on Tripadvisor and Google, 9.1 out of 10 on Booking.com and 9.6 out of 10 on Expedia, not to mention some stunning ratings from travel guides and international publications. I had the pleasure of chatting with Alain Negueloua, the Vice President and General Manager of the Bardessono, to find out what kind of magic he and his team are doing to inspire such consistently enthusiastic reviews. If you care about revenue optimization, culture, and attracting and retaining great guests and great employees, increasing profit and customer lifetime value, please listen and share this episode of Get Great Guest Reviews with your associates. As a hotelier who led my previous hotel collection to the highest guest review scores in the world, a 96.1% GRI, Global Review Index from Review Pro, I am passionate about learning about the daily habits of high-rated hotels and what habits they have in common. SPOILER ALERT! While each General Manager and Hospitality Leader has a different way of describing what they do, there are core habits that highly rated hoteliers all share! Even better, you can apply these habits and philosophies to your daily work life, and you, too, will enjoy similar rewards. These proven principles will work in any category of hotel, restaurant, or attraction and in any service industry business where it is beneficial and vital to have returning customers and enthusiastic referrals, recommendations, and online reviews. Here’s a quick overview of our discussion topics. For the Full Show Notes visit adelegutman.com/getgreatguestreviews  The elevating impact of an entrepreneurial spirit How experiencing excellence inspires more excellence in a community How to Stand Out from the Competition How to Build Trust Stories of the Power of Taking Action on Feedback The importance of collaborating with your team to solve problems Making Innovative Problem Solving a Daily Habit The Importance of Sharing the WHY. Hiring the right people and implementing standards. Clearly communicating standards and expectations The importance of listening to feedback. Relentless, constant, gentle pressure delivers a great guest experience. The importance of paying attention to the little things. The value of cross-training teams. How a stellar online reputation can help you stand apart. How stellar online reviews can give a competitive advantage. How stellar reviews help attract and retain employees. Books we discussed: Setting the Table by Danny Meyer Built to Last by Jim Collins Good to Great by Jim Collins Become a Hospitality Star Maker! If you want to learn more about making every guest and valued team member feel cared for, appreciated, and respected? Keep tuned into this conversation and subscribe to Get Great Guest Reviews! I hope you enjoy and benefit from this episode! Thank you so much to my guest Alain Negueloua Vice President and General Manager of The Bardessono Hotel and Spa in Yountville, California, managed by Remington Hospitality: https://www.bardessono.com/  If you would like some help implementing these ideas, it would be my pleasure to make the process easy for you. Please set up a time for us to chat on Calendly: https://calendly.com/adele-gutman/15min Website: https://www.adelegutman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/ Adele’s Speaker Sheet: https://www.adelegutman.com/AdelesSpeakersSheet/ Twitter: @AdeleGutman YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/GetGreatGuestReviewswithAdeleGutman Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-great-guest-reviews/id1607713697 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzM3NzIxMy9yc3M?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwiYyoi9gqH4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AAgxomCdTCWue20ru3QWs Thank you for listening! Have a great week, and keep reaching for the stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Adele

Dr. Peter Ricci has been honored as a Hospitality Hero and a Top 25 Minds by HSMAI and a Global Top 100 Most Power Leaders and Thirty Most Influential Educators in Hospitality by International Hospitality Institute. Undoubtedly, Peter is one of the most influential leaders in our industry. He deserves all these honors and more for applying his unrelenting yet loving, gentle pressure on the industry to move the culture forward in a more positive and richly rewarding direction. As Clinical Professor and Director of Hospitality and Tourism for Florida Atlantic University, Dr. Peter Ricci has his finger on the pulse of the dreams, frustrations, challenges, and opportunities of today’s goal-oriented and aspiring hospitality professionals. In today’s episode, Dr. Ricci shares his insights on why reputation and guest feedback management are more important than ever and how hospitality leaders can best empower and inspire our associates to deliver excellence in hospitality to every guest. As a former vice president of sales, marketing, and revenue for a boutique hotel collection for 20 years, getting great guest reviews, referrals, and recommendations was one of my key responsibilities. I believe that an energized team of cross-trained associates who take pride in creative problem-solving and continuous improvement is as fundamental to revenue optimization as a great website, booking engine, and pricing strategy. Therefore, I am excited to share my conversation with you, both operations and commercial leaders, with the extraordinary Dr. Peter Ricci. Please take a few minutes to listen and learn more from Peter’s insights during our conversation on Get Great Guest Reviews, the Podcast! For full access to the show notes and more, please visit:  https://www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews Please subscribe and listen to the podcast so you won’t miss a single concept that you might like to try to progress and elevate your employee and guest experience. Why being in a state of flux is an exciting opportunity for growth How to infuse technology without “tipping over the Apple cart” One hotel’s big tip for offering flexibility in scheduling What the Country Club industry envisions for the future of work-life quality We also chatted about great books to read now: Show up, by Anthony Melchiori  Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara  The One Minute Manager How to Make Friends and Influence People Adele’s Favorite Peter Ricci Quote from the show: “…the better the service, the more the finance on the top and the bottom. And so in the reduction in turnover, it’s less costly, so it just makes financial sense as well. But that’s always the missing piece. ‘Oh, you want to add headcount, we can’t afford it.’ Well, how about what we’re spending on turnover? Spending on retraining. Let’s try it at least. All I say is try it, then you can see where it goes." If you want to learn more about making every guest and valued team member feel cared for, appreciated, and respected, keep tuned into this conversation and subscribe to Get Great Guest Reviews! General Managers, would like a free strategy session for your hotel? Feel free to connect with me and send a request. I love to help hospitality professionals elevate their productivity and profitability. Contact: getgreatguestreviews@adelegutman.com Until next time, keep reaching for the stars! Adele Gutman

I am so excited to share with you my recent discussion with Raul Moronta, Chief Commercial Officer of Remington Hotels as we talk about Brand Performance: Mission, Action with Intent, and Guest Satisfaction. Ask most travelers, and you are likely to hear about the lowering of hospitality and service excellence since the devastating impact of COVID. In fact, most consumers would say that customer service in all industries has taken a severe tumble. But counter to the trend, in the past year or so, Remington Hotels has been dramatically elevating its brand performance and loyalty across its diverse portfolio of 120 hotels by investing in its people and the guest experience they deliver. You’ll definitely want to hear what Raul Moronta has to say about this initiative and its impact. As someone who has led multiple hotels to successfully achieve Guest Review Scores that dominated their city, country, and, yes…the world, I was fascinated to learn more about what Remington Hotels is doing to drive revenue and loyalty at both branded and independent properties. Please take a few minutes to learn more from Raul’s insights during our conversation on Get Great Guest Reviews the Podcast! For full access to the show notes and more, please visit:  https://www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews What Actions Will You Take to Elevate Loyalty? A great guest experience worthy of a five-star review is no accident. It takes “action with intent” to continually support teams, diminish friction and make guests happy. Please take the time to comment, subscribe and share this podcast with business leaders who are passionate about elevating loyalty by creating a culture of hospitality and continuous improvement. And don’t forget to check out our previous articles for tips you can start to apply immediately to your own business. Want a free strategy session for your hotel? Feel free to connect with me and send a request. I love to help hospitality professionals elevate their productivity and profitability. getgreatguestreviews@adelegutman.com Until next time, keep reaching for the stars! Adele Gutman

Welcome Back to Get Great Guest Reviews, Season 2!    Recently, on LinkedIn, there was a poll asking what hotel general managers and hospitality professionals care most about and want to see content on. As I recall, Trends in the Industry, Technology, and Revenue Management were all popular. However, Reputation and Social Media were combined and still came out at the bottom of the list, with only 2% of hospitality professionals showing any interest. Say it isn’t so!  I took this surprising information as an opportunity to start our new season of podcasts with why everyone needs to care about guest reviews.  It is a fundamental concept of business success that highly satisfied customers are more likely to return, purchase more frequently, and spread good word-of-mouth advertising to help a business attract and keep more loyal guests. In the world of hotels and global online distribution, this basic principle is exponentially elevated and more important than ever before.  In this episode, Adele Gutman breaks down 9 Top Reasons Why Hoteliers Need to Make Reputation and Guest Feedback a Super Power for Revenue Results.   Listen in now to hear about the impact on customer loyalty, employee retention, Average Daily Rate, Sales & Marketing conversions, display algorithms, and more!  THANK YOU!  I want to thank everyone who supported this podcast and patiently waited for the next season while I tended to matters at home. I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped Get Great Guest Reviews to be recognized as one of the top 35 podcasts in the hospitality industry for 2023 by the International Hospitality Institute! Check out a copy of Global Hospitality Magazine and discover all the honorees in the industry that you may want to follow.  If you have a question about reputation and how to inspire consistent five-star reviews from your guests, contact us at getgreatreviews@adelegutman.com  Subscribe, Follow, and Connect with Adele Gutman: Website: https://www.adelegutman.com/  Podcast Page: Get Great Guest Reviews Podcast Page LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/ Invite Adele to speak at your next conference: https://www.adelegutman.com/AdelesSpeakersSheet  If you have a question about reputation and how to inspire consistent five-star reviews from your guests, contact us at getgreatreviews@adelegutman.com 

Did you know that there are over 130 000 hotels in the USA? I consider myself fortunate that three of the four hotels I worked with at Library Hotel Collection were rated among the top 25 hotels in the USA on the Best of the Best, Tripadvisor's Travelers Choice Awards, and the fourth one was followed very closely behind. The people whose hotels rank among the top guest-reviewed hotels in the country are all part of a very fortunate group of hoteliers who have discovered and implemented the secrets to what it takes to make guests happy. The guests are so happy they can’t help themselves from writing 5-star reviews for the kind people who treated them like VIPs. The secret these General Managers have is a process, a daily discipline, and a philosophical commitment to continuously improve the guest experience. This episode is an edited revisit to a conversation with one of the top General Managers in the United States, the serial award-winning Carlo Carroccia of Charlestowne Hotels. Carlo is the Dual General Manager of both the French Quarter Inn and the Spectator hotel in Charleston, and time and time again, those two hotels keep showing up among the top 25 Hotels in the US on Tripadvisor. He’s not trying to be the #1 Hotel in the country on Tripadvisor. Instead, he is focused on creating a culture where every day, every employee is on a mission to make every guest experience a happy one. Please enjoy this episode and learn from a master! The process works. It works for Carlo, it worked for me, and they will work for anyone who wants to learn how to make guest happiness a growth strategy for their hospitality or service business.   If you would like to learn how to implement these principles at your hotels or portfolio, please get in touch with Adele at getgreatreviews@adelegutman.com or subscribe at adelegutman.com

Leadership in Action is Essential for Cultivating Consumer Confidence.    Albert Einstein famously said, "Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them." I love the wisdom in that quote! My hospitality spin on this quote would be:    Good hotels deal with problems. Great hotels fix problems. The most loved hotels see a problem as an opportunity for creativity and innovation, so they avoid having to see that problem recur.   To illustrate this point, I have selected a few true-to-life review responses I have just seen online.   I will show some typical hotel review responses, where the hotel hopes to get the customer back, fingers crossed. They are dealing with the problem. not fixing or preventing it from recurring. The reputation management box has been checked, but has anything been accomplished?   I will then show an alternative approach for the response so you can see the difference.  You can decide which sound good versus which effectively elevate consumer confidence by showcasing responsible and compassionate leadership in action. That response has a good chance of winning a return visit and attracting new customers.    The excellent review response came from a young manager, Frangelica Siy, at the Embassy Suites in Downtown San Diego. They are a 3-Star hotel that consistently inspires 5-Star reviews from its guests, thanks to leadership in action from great hoteliers like Frangelica. No wonder the Embassy Suites in San Diago is currently one of the top 10 hotels in the city, out of hundreds of other hotels, many far more opulent than the Embassy Suites. Way to go- Frangelica and team!     I hope you will find these examples illuminating and begin to consider these Dos and Don'ts whenever you or your team respond to reviews with the goals of elevating consumer confidence, living your values, and demonstrating leadership in action.    For more information and inspiration on Reputation Cultivation, Leadership and Culture, please visit adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews.         

Have you ever been offered a complimentary night after reporting an issue to a hotel?   It happened to me a couple of times when I was totally shocked by the offer. I wasn’t expecting to be offered a comp night; I wasn’t asking for it, and it had never even crossed my mind.   To my surprise, when the free night was offered,  it somehow didn’t feel like a gift of apology and customer appreciation. It felt like it was offered as a quick “go-to” way of ending a conversation.   This was a revelation to me. It struck me that seemingly, at hotels around the nation, managers have been trained to pacify guests in this very expensive way to quickly end an uncomfortable conversation and hopefully avoid a negative review.   I’m Adele Gutman. I am known for helping my hotels have the highest guest review scores in their cities, and their countries, even earning the highest company-wide online review scores worldwide!   Now, I help hoteliers learn methods that really work to inspire guest loyalty by creating a culture of caring, collaboration, and continuous improvement. In my experience, I can assure you that there’s a better way to empower teams, create loyalty and earn a stellar reputation, and that’s what we will discuss today.   Welcome to Get Great Guest Reviews!   Follow and connect with Adele Gutman: Website: https://www.adelegutman.com/  Podcast Page: Get Great Guest Reviews Podcast Page LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/ Adele's Speaker and Consulting Sheet: https://www.adelegutman.com/AdelesSpeakersSheet     

What’s the one thing everyone in hospitality needs to know to inspire 5-Star Reviews? Adele Gutman is known for having exceptional results in leading her hotels to the top guest review success in their market, city, state, country, and, yes, even the world. There is a multitude of concepts that comprise the signature five-star review system that she formulated to achieve a company-wide 96.1% Global Review Index Score.  But in this episode, Adele focuses on one essential concept at the core of five-star hospitality. And you don't even have to be a five-star business to deliver five-star hospitality and inspire five-star reviews.  Adele Gutman shares a few stories highlighting the one thing every hospitality business owner, manager, or front-line employee must fully embrace as a philosophical commitment if you want your business to excel. We hope you will listen and be inspired to break away from the pack and help your team embrace a different way of thinking. It will definitely help you to inspire a sunshower of enthusiastic, five-star reviews for your hotel or restaurant.  https://www.adelegutman.com/  

There was a recent article in the Harvard Business Review - Future-Proofing Businesses with Modern Customer Engagement, written by Karen Peacock, the Chief Executive Officer of Intercom. 44% of respondents, hundreds of Harvard Business Review readers, indicated that a lack of collaboration and the constrictions of information silos at work are the top impediments to successful customer engagement at their company. The second obstacle at 32% of responses was the failure to share customer insight data throughout the company. This insight hits close to home for me. I feel that a lack of collaboration and lack of sharing guest feedback are two of the top impediments to solving customer problems. That's how we limit our customer satisfaction success. If we coupled collaboration with leadership,  fostering shared personal and company-wide intentions to embrace positive change, we would easily create more five-star guest experiences. Please listen to the podcast. I want to share what I think is a terrific little story of something that just happened to me at a hotel this week that demonstrates how easy it can be to break through these obstacles and start delivering better experiences at a hotel or any business. I will also share several tips on how you can begin today to initiate simple yet effective communications to transform the guest experience.  If you would like some help implementing these ideas, please reach out to me.  Follow and connect with Adele Gutman: Website: https://www.adelegutman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/ Adele’s Speaker & Consulting Sheet Facebook: InspireFiveStars with Adele Gutman Instagram: InspireFiveStars with Adele Gutman Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdeleGutman  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/GetGreatGuestReviewswithAdeleGutman  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-great-guest-reviews/id1607713697 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzM3NzIxMy9yc3M?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwiYyoi9gqH4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AAgxomCdTCWue20ru3QWs Thank you for listening! If you found value in this discussion, it would mean the world to us to have you as a subscriber and share this with anyone you know who might benefit from Get Great Guest Reviews the Podcast! Have a great week, and keep reaching for the stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Adele Link to the Article in HBR: https://hbr.org/sponsored/2022/07/future-proofing-businesses-with-modern-customer-engagement

Welcome to Get Great Guest Reviews! In this week’s episode, Christoph Hütter, the non-traditional revenue manager, joins me to discuss the Revenue generating impact of excellence in Reputation, Reviews, and the Guest Experience. Revenue Managers, General Managers, and Hotel Owners, you will want to pay attention to this because there is no revenue optimization without reputation optimization! That means creating a culture of caring, collaboration, and continuous improvement. In addition to the video, please be sure to read the accompanying blog posts on my website www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews Follow and connect with Christoph Hütter: Website: https://christophhutter.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophhutter/ Follow and connect with Adele Gutman: Website: https://www.adelegutman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/ Adele’s Speaker & Consulting Sheet Facebook: InspireFiveStars with Adele Gutman Instagram: InspireFiveStars with Adele Gutman Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdeleGutman  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/GetGreatGuestReviewswithAdeleGutman  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-great-guest-reviews/id1607713697 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzM3NzIxMy9yc3M?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwiYyoi9gqH4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AAgxomCdTCWue20ru3QWs Thank you for listening! If you found value in this discussion, it would mean the world to us to have you as a subscriber and share this with anyone you know who might benefit from Get Great Guest Reviews the Podcast! Have a great week, and keep reaching for the stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Adele

"Would You Treat Your Mama Like That?"  Are your mission statement and guiding principles filled with words like honesty, integrity, trust, relationships, caring, and transparency?   Of course, they are! We are hospitality!   Our quest for excellence requires reflection and self-examination to ensure we truly live in those values.   For the most part, there's tremendous heart and honor in the hospitality industry, but sometimes the grind of life can lead us astray from our best intentions, especially in times of stress, like these last few years. By reading reviews from across the country and reviewing websites and booking engines, I have observed a few common blind spots that need attention.   We all know the importance of making our guests feel cared for, appreciated, and respected. We also appreciate the potential lifetime value of every customer in terms of return visits, recommendations, and referrals.   With the ever-rising cost of customer acquisition, it is fiscally prudent for us to practice reputation and loyalty cultivation actively.   In this episode, we will examine seven common complaints on negative reviews that reflect what many travelers consider a deviation from fully, forthright, and honest communications. I would call it a failure to deliver satisfaction on brand promises on websites and booking engines.   We'll use the litmus test, "Would you treat your mama like that?" to judge the guest-centricity of these common yet unappreciated practices.  Please enjoy this episode!    Follow and connect with Adele Gutman:   Website: Adele Gutman   LinkedIn: Adele Gutman   Adele's Speaker & Consulting Sheet   Facebook: InspireFiveStars with Adele Gutman   Instagram: InspireFiveStars with Adele Gutman   Twitter: Adele Gutman   Youtube: Get Great Guest Reviews with Adele Gutman     Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-great-guest-reviews/id1607713697   Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzM3NzIxMy9yc3M?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwiYyoi9gqH4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AAgxomCdTCWue20ru3QWs     Thank you for listening!   If you found value in this discussion, it would mean the world to us to have you as a subscriber and share this with anyone you know who might benefit from Get Great Guest Reviews the Podcast!     Have a great week, and reach for the stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐    

I’ll be bold and just say it. Technology without humanity cannot resolve the Guest Expectation vs Guest Experience gap that so many businesses are facing today. Technology is a tool. It’s just a tool. But in the hands of compassionate people who feel inspired, empowered, and encouraged by their leaders to guests happy, great technology can give them wings to fly.   There’s so much to think about when exploring the relationship between Humans and Technology in delivering great experiences to our guests, I asked a fellow Customer Experience Strategist, Larry Leung of Transformidy, to join me for a conversation.   For additional resources including highlights and complete show notes from this interview, please visit adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews/ Link to this episode and the accompanying blog post with more tips on how to have humanity and technology with together to elevate the guest experience :https://www.adelegutman.com/post/solving-the-guest-experience-with-technology-and-humanity Website: https://transformidy.com/ and adelegutman.com LinkedIn: Larry Leung  and https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelegutman/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/_larryleung and https://twitter.com/AdeleGutman If you have any questions about how to inspire five-star reviews, please send your message or comment to getgreatreviews@adelegutman.com and we will be sure to answer them on an upcoming episode and/or directly with you.  Thank you, in advance for subscribing, and sharing your heartfelt reviews. It means the world to us when we hear that you find the content helpful, and what's more, it helps others find our content too.  Have a wonderful week. Let's all sparkle some sunshine on our guests, our friends, our families, our co-workers, and our neighbors and send a bit of kindness throughout our country and our world.  Everyone could use a break from these challenging times and enjoy a generous helping of hospitality right now.  Be the change,  Adele 

Throughout the world, there are many hoteliers who are hard at work doing their best to "do Reputation Management". These hoteliers are reading articles and getting tips from friends, suppliers, or consultants on how to do it right. But are the industry standards really working?  Many of the commonly accepted practices are not actually helping hoteliers significantly move the needle when it comes to reputation. And in many cases, behaviors like cutting and pasting templates are inadvertently frustrating travelers, making them feel that we care more about the show and about showing we genuinely care.  As someone who has led the hotel collection with the highest level of guest satisfaction, and interviewed many of the most successful hoteliers in the world, I am excited to share with you today five of the most common mistakes when it comes to responding like a superstar to negative reviews.  In addition to the video, please be sure to read the accompanying blog posts on my website www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews.com   

American Industrialist and Innovator Henry Ford famously said, "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." I find this quote so practical and useful when thinking about hospitality reputation cultivation and responding to negative reviews. That's because it's important to know that reputation isn't based on what you say, but rather on what you do. What powerful management responses have in common is that they are based on actions already taken.  Today, most negative reviews go unresponded to according to a study done by ReviewPro. In my own observations, negative review responses rarely show true authority, personal responsibility, and progress in action. That means that for those willing to put in a bit of effort up front, you can set your business up for success and stand out from the competition with ease.  If you are ready to outshine the competition, Adele Gutman presents 5 things to do before you begin to write your management response to a negative review.  For lots of free resources including the complete show notes to this episode and more, visit https://www.adelegutman.com/getgreatreviews https://www.adelegutman.com/post/master-the-management-response-five-things-before-you-write

Welcome to Get Great Guest Reviews! I hope you enjoy the podcast and the accompanying article. Each episode is designed to help everyone move forward on their journey towards progressively heightened levels of guest loyalty and delight as well as employee engagement and growth. Please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode or an opportunity to inspire five-star reviews.   The hospitality industry, like most service industries, is filled with people who love to make a positive difference in people’s lives. But, when you have a dream of how things at work should be, it can be disheartening when the “realities” of work-life seem to conspire to keep you or your business from fulfilling your potential.   But not all barriers to success are actual “realities”. Often it is our own unexamined mindset that inhibits us from taking the very actions that move us closer to our goals. In this episode, I am joined by hospitality expert Cheryl C. Jones, owner of Simply the Best Results and the author of the book, Emotional Self Mastery. We discuss some of our suggestions and insights on how to take charge of your destiny and gently step around any self-talk that isn’t empowering your happiness and success.   As Cheryl says, mindsets are neither inherently positive or negative. We as humans simply have patterns of thinking and beliefs that we gleaned from life. These could have come from our parents, our schooling, our self-talk about personal experiences, and even from “experts” on webinars and podcasts. So sometimes we need to reflect and ask ourselves, “Why do I think that?” and, “Is that really true?” For example, I have heard and read, dozens of times hoteliers and experts saying that most people who write reviews are motivated to do so because they want to complain. That seems like it makes sense, right? But the reality is that according to Tripadvisor the average review is 4.1 -4.4 depending on the year. The new study released by ReviewPro in collaboration with Cornell University says that in a sample of 7,500 hotels around the world, the average review score was 84.6%. Clearly, what is considered a common belief doesn’t act stand up to statistical data.   So let’s take some time to reflect on some common beliefs that may be holding us back from taking positive action and fulfilling our goals.   To access lots of free resources including the complete show notes and more visit https://www.adelegutman.com/.    To find out more about Cheryl Jones, visit:  https://simplythebestresults.com/   Adele mentioned some statistics you can find at the source on ReviewPro:  https://reviewpro.shijigroup.com/essentials/global-review-index#see