Hotel Reputation Management – Complete Guide

By: Frank DePino | July 7, 2025

Your hotel’s reputation isn’t just part of your business — it’s the foundation of your success. 

In an industry where guests rely on reviews, social proof, and online buzz to choose where they stay, managing how your hotel is perceived can mean the difference between empty rooms and steady bookings. 

Hotel reputation management is the practice of monitoring, influencing, and improving how guests and the public perceive your hotel across online and offline channels. It involves tracking reviews, responding to feedback, managing social media presence, and implementing strategies to build trust, highlight strengths, and address concerns.

In this guide, you’ll discover why hotel reputation management matters, the benefits it brings, and proven strategies, including the best tools, to build trust, grow revenue, and stay ahead of the competition.

Here’s an overview of what this guide contains:

• 5 Benefits of Hotel Online Reputation Management 
• 10 Steps to Improve Your Hotel’s Reputation 
• How to Choose the Right Hotel Reputation Management Software 
• 9 of the Best Hotel Reputation Management Software Choices
• Case Studies 

Read on to learn all you need to know about hospitality reputation management! 

5 Benefits of Hotel Online Reputation Management

Engaging in the practice of managing your hotel’s online reputation is absolutely essential for success in the hotel business. Doing so will wonderfully serve your hotel for the better and provide substantial benefits. 

Let’s examine five of these key advantages. 

1. Increased Revenue

When travelers research hotels, they trust reviews and ratings. A strong reputation leads to higher booking rates and premium pricing power. 

Guests are willing to pay more when they see consistently positive feedback and recent glowing reviews. 

By prioritizing your online reputation, you boost your revenue potential and fill more rooms, even during off-peak seasons.. 

2. Improved Customer Relations 

Your reputation is built on guest experiences. By managing reviews, responding quickly to feedback, and showing that you care, you build trust and loyalty. 

Guests feel valued and are more likely to return, recommend your hotel, and leave positive reviews. 

This cycle of engagement strengthens your brand’s image and turns satisfied guests into advocates.

3. Brand Awareness

Your hotel’s reputation shapes how travelers perceive your brand. 

Proactive reputation management ensures your brand is associated with quality, consistency, and exceptional service. 

The more positive mentions and ratings you collect, the more familiar — and trusted — your brand becomes in a crowded market.

4. Separation from Competitors 

With over 187,000 hotels worldwide, it is undeniable that the hotel industry is quite crowded and highly competitive. 

Customers all over the world are presented with numerous options when considering a hotel, and the need to stand out in a crowded market is paramount. 

Knowing this, managing your hotel’s reputation is absolutely necessary to separate yourself from your competitors and secure bookings. 

5. The attraction of Top-Level Talent

Talented hospitality professionals want to work at respected, highly-rated establishments. 

A strong online reputation makes your hotel an employer of choice, attracting top-level staff who are committed to guest satisfaction. 

The result? Better service, happier guests, and a stronger bottom line.

10 Steps to Improve Your Hotel’s Reputation 

The longevity of your hotel is directly related to its reputation. Knowing this, all steps must be taken to attach an exemplary reputation to your hotel. To accomplish this feat, we’ve compiled 10 invaluable tips that will collectively aid in boosting your hotel’s reputation. 

1. Set a Strategy 

Proper hotel resort reputation management requires a thoughtfully considered strategy. Multiple ingredients are present in a holistic approach, and each needs to be carefully executed so as to be complementary to the whole.

Take the necessary time to decide which tactics to implement and how to do so in a thorough manner. Create goals and establish milestones within those goals in order to track progress.

Utilize your team and set assignments that play to individuals’ strengths – leveraging talent in the right way will yield tremendous results. 

2. Know Yourself 

A large portion of success comes from being self-aware. Though it’s not always easy to be critical when self-reflecting, you must identify your areas of weakness and address them accordingly. 

Also, be sure not to operate in a silo – seek the help of others who excel where you may fall short. 

Pinpointing and actively working on improving weak points is vitally important to bolstering your hospitality reputation management. 

3. Celebrate and Value Your Strengths 

In the same vein, it is also significant to recognize your strengths and appropriately celebrate those areas in which you thrive. 

Be sure to reinforce your strengths and keep them at the forefront of your operations – you want the general public to readily recognize what you do best.

4. Survey Your Guests and Leverage the Feedback

Customer insights are fundamentally crucial to gaining valuable knowledge of how your hotel is perceived by the public. Surveying your guests offers the insight necessary to fix any common areas of concern, solidify customer satisfaction, and plan for the future. 

With that said, it can be a challenge to entice customers to take action and complete your survey. Consider attaching a benefit to doing so – such as a percentage off their next stay, a complimentary meal, or something in a similar vein. 

5. Respond to Online Reviews

Online reviews are undeniably influential in customers’ purchasing decisions. In fact, 97% of consumers consider customer reviews before finalizing a purchase. As such, engaging with customer reviews and responding in a timely manner needs to be a top priority. 

Doing so accomplishes several key objectives. 

First, it exemplifies the fact that you care about your customers and value their feedback. 

Second, a prompt response indicates that you operate an efficient and organized institution and allocate the necessary resources to customer satisfaction. 

Finally, it presents an opportunity to elevate yourself above your competitors – potential guests will surely be considering several hotel options, and exhibiting exemplary customer service is a great method of standing out from your competitors. 

6. Be Empathetic and Open to Criticism 

This may be easier said than done, but it is nonetheless vital that you remain receptive to negative feedback. 

Every single business – no matter the industry – contains certain areas that should be honed and improved; and, frankly, your hotel is no different. 

How you respond to criticism says quite a bit about your hotel and its core values. Always be respectful (whether or not you consider the criticism to be valid) and engage in reasonable measures to fix the issue. 

Ideally, this will not only pacify the disgruntled customer but will also indicate to other potential guests that you believe in making their stay as agreeable as possible. 

7. Leverage Storytelling 

Proper storytelling is a vital aspect of both reputation management and your overall marketing efforts. When done correctly, storytelling informs customers of who you are, what you stand for, and what your mission is. 

In other words, it is the process of bringing your brand to life. Leverage your storytelling to further entice customers to visit your hotel and, thereby, foster customer loyalty. 

For more information on the power of storytelling in the hotel industry, be sure to dive into this incredible piece that examines the benefits of telling your hotel’s story.

8. Invest in Digital Marketing 

Due to the popularity of social media platforms, it should come as no surprise that 70% of Americans are active on at least one form of social media (such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.).

Therefore, it is imperative that you put forth an appreciable degree of effort into advertising on these social media platforms. Indeed, it will keep your hotel relevant, boost customer interaction, result in new leads, and positively influence your hotel’s reputation.

9. Develop Your Brand 

First, let’s clearly identify exactly what a brand is. As is precisely stated by Market Business News, a brand can be defined as the following: 

To succeed in the crowded hotel market, you must develop and maintain a distinctive brand. Your brand creates awareness, engenders customer loyalty, and carves out a niche in the broader marketplace. 

For further insights into branding, and the management thereof, check out our remarkably helpful brand reputation management guide.

10. Deploy Hotel Reputation Management Software 

Properly managing the reputation of your hotel is an involved process that demands considerable attention and resources. Thankfully, the process of doing so can be significantly aided by particular software. 

These programs will actively scan the web to identify reviews – both positive and negative – of your hotel, allowing you to expeditiously respond. 

This can save you an ample amount of time (continuously and manually scanning the myriad review sites for mentions of your hotel is simply unreasonable), thereby permitting you the opportunity to commit your attention to other pressing matters.

How to Choose the Right Hotel Reputation Management Software

Incorporating this beneficial tool into your hotel reputation management strategy is a no-brainer. There are, however, numerous options to choose from and you may be contemplating the right one to choose. 

In order to take some of the guesswork out of your purchase, let’s examine the capabilities that should be present in the software. The best hotel management software utilities include the following:

1. Necessary documentation to solicit online reviews 
2. The ability to scan review sites to collect customer reviews for examination
3. Effective management platforms to provide data on online reviews 
4. Continuous monitoring of the web to instantaneously notify you of mentions of your hotel 

The above checklist should serve as your guide when weighing different hotel resort reputation management software options. With that said, let’s make things even simpler by providing you with a list of some of the options available.

9 of the Best Hotel Reputation Management Software Choices

Choosing the right software makes it easier to build trust, grow revenue, and stand out from competitors. 

Here are some the top hotel reputation management tools you can consider:

1. TrustYou

TrustYou collects and analyzes guest feedback across multiple platforms. It offers real-time sentiment insights so you can address issues fast and highlight positive experiences.

2. Revinate

Revinate combines survey tools, review monitoring, marketing automation, and guest profiles in one easy-to-use dashboard. It helps you build strong relationships with guests and grow repeat business.

3. GuestRevu

GuestRevu gathers reviews and competitor insights in one place. You’ll receive instant alerts, so you never miss a mention, and you can compare your reputation against nearby hotels.

4. MARA AI

MARA AI uses AI to write review responses, analyze sentiment, and compare you against competitors. It saves time and ensures you reply quickly with a professional, personal touch.

5. Canary Technologies

Canary helps you increase positive reviews by encouraging satisfied guests to post on sites like TripAdvisor and Google. It automates surveys and set-up is quick — no hardware needed.

6. GuestTouch

GuestTouch unifies guest communication, hotel review management, and AI-powered response tools. Boutique and independent hotels often prefer GuestTouch for its simple setup and powerful features.

7. Podium

Podium focuses on SMS-based review collection. It lets you send text messages asking guests for reviews and makes it easy to manage multi-location properties through one dashboard.

8. Reputation

Reputation is built for larger hotels and chains. It offers robust analytics, sentiment tracking, survey tools, and social media monitoring in one place.

9. ReviewTrackers / InMoment

InMoment (formerly ReviewTrackers) offers detailed sentiment and guest experience analysis. It’s ideal if you need advanced reporting, competitor benchmarking, and enterprise-level tools.

Hotel Reputation Management: Case Studies

JW Marriott

Mediaboom partnered with JW Marriott to elevate the reputation of their new Houston location, establishing it as the premier luxury destination in the city. From day one, our strategy focused on building trust and visibility through a fully integrated digital and print campaign. This included targeted SEO, custom website development, strategic web design, and high-end print collateral—each crafted to reflect the hotel’s prestige and enhance guest perception.

We improved the hotel’s online reputation by optimizing the digital experience for both search engines and users. The custom website conveyed elegance, while the content strategy highlighted the brand’s signature luxury experience. These efforts translated into a 200% surge in website traffic, increased direct bookings, and a powerful brand presence that set JW Marriott Houston apart in a competitive hospitality market.

Millennium Tower San Francisco

Millennium Tower San Francisco turned to Mediaboom to craft a digital presence that matched the building’s elite status and helped manage its public image. We delivered a full suite of services—including responsive web design, SEO, branding, interactive elements, custom animations, and print design—each aligned with the goal of enhancing the building’s digital reputation.

Every element was designed to build trust and showcase the property’s exclusivity. The website’s responsive layout and interactive features mirrored the tower’s refined aesthetic, while our SEO strategy positioned the brand in front of a high-end audience. The outcome: a stronger digital reputation, increased visibility, and a lasting impression on discerning potential residents seeking the best of urban luxury in San Francisco.

FAQs

Wrap-up

Your hotel’s reputation is one of your most valuable assets. From improving guest satisfaction and boosting revenue to attracting top talent and standing out from competitors, effective reputation management delivers real, measurable results.

In conjunction with software, it is you can also consider hiring a hotel reputation management company.

Ready to strengthen your hotel’s reputation and drive more bookings? 

Contact Mediaboom hotel marketing agency and start today!

By: Frank DePino

Frank DePino is the Principal and Founder of Mediaboom, a digital marketing agency that partners with top hospitality and luxury brands. With over 30 years of experience, Frank has led strategic digital marketing initiatives for iconic names including Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Millennium Partners, and Guardian Jet. He specializes in helping hospitality businesses elevate their brand presence, generate leads, and enhance guest experiences through website design, SEO, content marketing, and paid media. Under Frank’s leadership, Mediaboom is a trusted partner for brands seeking meaningful digital growth in the competitive hospitality landscape.