Reviews for your property can have numerous benefits for your vacation rental business, including increased visibility, improved credibility, valuable feedback, and a powerful marketing tool. Positive reviews from past guests can help build trust with potential guests and increase their confidence in your property.
But what about negative reviews? Your response to a negative review can speak volumes to potential guests! OwnerRez recommends that any responses to negative reviews should remain factual and professional.
Navigating Reviews
Although there are two ways to navigate Guest reviews, responding to them is essentially the same.
CRM Reviews
Users can view all reviews in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) section by clicking on the CRM dropdown menu and selecting Reviews.
Note the two tabs at the top of the Review list.
- Guest Reviews displays reviews from Hosted Websites and integrated channel listings such as Vrbo.
- Host Reviews requires an Airbnb channel connection and displays Airbnb Host Reviews.
Users can view and/or edit the Guest Review by clicking on the left pencil icon dropdown list and selecting View this review as well as the following.
- Record a New Review
- Edit and/or Filter the Guest Reviews
- Import and/or Export Guest Reviews
- Note whether the Guest Review is Vrbo eligible and/or Vrbo synced.
When users open individual reviews, they have the option to respond and can do so by clicking on Change Details.
Users can also choose to Delete Review, Show or Hide the Guest Review.
Individual Booking Reviews
OwnerRez users can respond to a Hosted Website guest review by navigating to the individual Booking > Reviews.
Click on the Pen icon and select Edit this review from the drop-down list.
Responding to Reviews
Click on Change Details.
Users can enter their publically displayed Owner Response to the guest review.
The Additional Metadata section displays additional technical details about the review or allows OwnerRez to match up the review when doing a bulk import from listing sites. If you see details in this section that you don't remember adding, do not remove them. Ask us instead, and we'll explain where they came from.
Note that this reviewer provided Private Feedback regarding the neighbor's dog, allowing the user to deal with that issue privately. The private feedback area is for record keeping but won't be publicly displayed on your Hosted Website or sent to the guest.
If users want to add private information about guests, OwnerRez recommends that users add those to the Notes section of the individual booking.
OwnerRez users also have to ability to determine if they wish to display the review publicly on their Hosted Website and/or Reviews Widget by checking the Show Publicly checkbox. Users can also "unpublish" the review by unclicking the Show Publicly checkbox.
Conversely, users can also delete the review by clicking on the lower right-hand Delete Review button.
Users can save their public response to the guest review by clicking on Save.
Deleting Reviews
Users can delete Guest Reviews permanently by clicking on the Delete Review button. Users should note that this cannot be undone.
Show/Hide Reviews
Users can toggle the Show or Hide button to either Show or Hide the specific Guest Review on their Hosted Website and/or Reviews Widget.
Showing the Guest Review makes the review and any host/owner/PM response public and viewable on your Hosted Website and/or Reviews Widget.
Hide Owner/PM Review Response
Want to "hide your host response"? OwnerRez recommends that users not complete the Owner Response section and instead add that content to the Notes section of the individual booking.