A reply to every review, and the same complaint every month
The general manager replies to every review on Google, TripAdvisor and Booking.com. It takes a while, and she does it well. The replies thank the guest, apologise where needed and say the comment has been passed on. In truth, passing it on means mentioning it at the Monday meeting, if she remembers.
Six months later, a guest writes that the showers on the second floor are weak. So did someone in March, someone in May and two people in July, across three different sites. Nobody put those together. The head of maintenance never saw them. The same thing is true of the breakfast queue at weekends and the time it takes to check in when a coach arrives.
Why reviews do not turn into fixes
Review sites are designed for replying, not for running a hotel. Each has its own dashboard, its own scoring and its own way of showing comments.
- Reviews are spread across several sites, and nobody reads them all together.
- One review mentions several departments: the room, the breakfast, the staff at reception.
- Department heads do not have logins to the review sites, and would not have time to read them if they did.
- Themes emerge over months, but each review is read on its own, once.
- Private feedback from post-stay surveys is in another place again.
What unrouted feedback costs
The same problems keep appearing in reviews, which pulls down your scores on the sites guests use to choose between you and the hotel next door. Department heads are criticised for things they never heard about. Real improvements that staff make go unnoticed because nobody is tracking whether the complaint has stopped.
And the general manager spends hours every week reading and replying, with little to show for it beyond the replies themselves.
Private feedback is the part most often wasted. Guests who fill in the post-stay survey often say things they would not put in a public review, such as the member of staff who was short with them or the room that smelled of damp. Those answers go to an inbox or a survey dashboard nobody opens, and the department concerned never hears about them.
How we build review tracking by department
- Reviews are collected from the sites you use, through official APIs or feeds where available, and from your own post-stay survey.
- Each review is split into comments, and each comment is tagged by department (rooms, housekeeping, food and drink, front desk, maintenance, events) and theme (shower pressure, noise, breakfast queue). An AI model does the first pass and a person can correct it.
- Each department head gets a weekly summary of comments about their area, with the original text and a link.
- Themes are counted over time, so you can see whether 'shower pressure on the second floor' is rising, flat or gone since the fix.
- Reply drafts are prepared in your voice for the GM to edit and post, which keeps replies personal without starting from a blank page.
- Specific issues, such as a named room with a fault, can be sent straight to the maintenance list.
| Theme | Department | Trend | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weak shower, second floor | Maintenance | Mentioned repeatedly this year | Investigate plumbing |
| Breakfast queue at weekends | Food and drink | Rising | Look at staffing and layout |
| Friendly reception staff | Front desk | Steady praise | Share with the team |
| Noise from function room | Events | Falling since changes | Keep watching |
We do not post replies automatically. Replies go out under your name, and a person reads each one.
What the Monday meeting looks like
Each department head arrives having read the week's comments about their area. The meeting discusses the two or three themes that are rising, with the guests' own words on the screen. The maintenance manager can show that the second floor shower complaints stopped after the pumps were replaced.
The GM spends less time drafting replies and more on the handful of reviews that need a personal response. Staff see positive comments with their names in them, which matters more than it sounds.
Is this your hotel?
- Reviews are replied to but not analysed.
- Department heads rarely see reviews about their area.
- The same complaint appears across sites for months.
- You cannot tell whether a fix has changed what guests say.
- Replying to reviews takes a large part of someone's week.