26 – How to Manage Google Reviews

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

In this episode of Suite Spot, we discuss reports that Google Reviews surpassed Booking.com as the number one review distribution site. Host Ryan Embree is joined by Jason Lee to explore how Google is positioning itself in the hotel industry and what it means for individual properties moving forward. Ryan and Jason also give insight about a recent review response study conducted by Revinate. Jason gives his thoughts on why more budget and midscale properties are responding to reviews than luxury properties, and why year over year 5-star response rates are trending down. We also discuss the impact that responding to Google reviews has on SEO. In the Q&A segment, we put Jason back in the chair of a hotel general manager and ask his thoughts on how he would approach Google reviews for his individual property. To submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hey, hello and, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. As always, I am your host, Ryan Embree. Today we've got a great episode, and I am joined by one of our more frequented guests on the show, Mr. Jason Lee, who is the vice president of product development and technology at Travel Media Group, so I'll go ahead and welcome you in. Once again, Jason, thanks for being on the show today. Jason Lee: Thank you for having me. Ryan Embree: We're going to get into a lot of topics today and the episode itself is called Google reviews and we're going to talk about the big news coming out about Google reviews, but I wanted to first kind of start talking just about review generation as a whole because Revinate came out with a report here on some really cool analytics when it comes to online reviews, review response, review generation and wanting to get kind of your opinion and your thoughts on some of the information that was found. Jason Lee: Yeah. Ryan Embree: Before we get into Google reviews, let's talk about online review generation as a whole and when we still see year over year growth, but we saw the rate of review growth has slowed. Uh, any idea you think, why this is happening? Jason Lee: Well, I think it's interesting because I think the percentage of year over year has slowed it just because we're maybe starting to see critical mass in response. So you see new travelers coming up that might be more apt to leave reviews or you see a generation of more tech savvy travelers that rely on reviews and are also leaving reviews and getting reviews. You're kind of reaching for a technology crowd that is going to eventually reach critical mass in terms of like, you're not going to see those big giant numbers, um, that you use to see where, you know, I, I remember like in the early days of reputation, it was like every year TripAdvisor was doubling the number from the previous years. Right? Ryan Embree: Right. Jason Lee: So it was like this crazy jump and now there's more places to leave reviews. But you've also reached this place where there's, there are more reviews coming in now than ever before. I can tell you that right now, but I can, but also at the same time you're not, you may not see those giant gains like we had before. Ryan Embree: Right, and that sort of growth is, it's just not sustainable as far as, I mean it gets to a point, like you said, the critical mass. So do you kind of predict the trend of review growth is going to continue year over year? Jason Lee: I think so. Um, you take a site like Google where Google was really inconsequential in hospitality, uh, in inside of especially hotel reviews.