Online Reviews: To Respond or Not Respond?

UPDATE: From 4Hoteliers.com, May 6th: Best Practices for Responding to Online Hotel Reviews, Part I.
and the second part, posted May 20th: Best Practices for Responding to Online Hotel Reviews, Part 2.
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UPDATE: From eHotelier.com, March 29th: Tips for Managing Online Hotel Reviews: An Interview With TripAdvisor
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UPDATE, March 23rd: USA Today’s HOTEL CHECK-IN section just posted this as well: Hotel managers monitor online critiques to improve service
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Back in July of 2009 we did a post called “Good Tips for Bad Reviews“. One of our most popular topics, we still often take inquiries from members suddenly facing negative guest reviews online. We already know that, no matter how hard we try, we can’t please all the people all the time & bad days happen…

So, here’s my question:
Do you have a strategy for handling guest feedback in person, over the phone, or in writing to your establishment AND do you have a plan for dealing with these same type of comments when made online?

If you answered no, why not?

Conversations about your place are happening, whether you’re part of them or not.  So, in the spirit of encouraging you to be an active participant in those discussions, we’ve pulled together three more articles worth checking out:

1. Join the conversation about your business (from May, 09)
2. Responding to the good, the bad and the ugly (February, 2010)
3. SmartBrief on: How to handle customer comments (March, 2010)

Finally, this article was originally included in our first post, but I wanted to highlight it one more time because it details a PROACTIVE approach to online guest feedback: Beating negative hotel reviews: An action plan for proactive reputation management.

It’s your turn for feedback – let us have it in the comments section below!