Barefoot Bay Resort & Marina

Barefoot Bay Resort & Marina is a small family-owned hotel that won the Tripadvisor Traveler’s Choice award and has been a sought-after destination for more than a decade. Located in Clearwater Beach, FL, the hotel offers guests exclusive marina access and breathtaking views.

Challenge: Influencing traveler booking decisions on Tripadvisor

A hotel’s online reputation is critical to its success. After years of operating and gathering clients’ feedback, the hotel owner and manager, Stacey Watson, realized that most of her guests refer to Tripadvisor’s reviews to inform their booking decisions. Their guests not only care about the hotel’s overall rating, but most importantly, they also want to read about other travelers’ experiences and how they describe the property.

Another challenge the hotel was facing was ranking within their area. There are several competitors located in Clearwater Beach, however, Barefoot Bay Resort & Marina offers exclusive access to boat slips and is the only hotel licensed to offer accommodation on the marina.

Ironically, Stacey admitted that she uses Tripadvisor’s reviews to inform her own personal booking decisions, so it was time to leverage the platform’s tools to support the hotel’s growth.

Solution: Building credibility with travelers using Reputation Pro

To address this challenge, Stacey decided to implement Reputation Pro with automated review collection. She began by setting up a regular cadence for her review request emails and continues to see the benefits:

“It just makes it [review collection] easier for me”

Impact ranking and bubble score

Tripadvisor’s popularity ranking is based on user reviews and reflects the quality of traveler experiences. The better reviews you have, the more likely it is that travelers will see your business when they search for hotels in your area.
Reputation Pro helps hoteliers impact their ranking with access to easy review request emails. Barefoot Bay Resort was able to leverage positive reviews to impact their popularity ranking and stand out from the competition.

Never miss a review and easily respond to guests

After collecting more reviews, the next step to managing your online reputation is to respond to reviews. 77% of Tripadvisor travelers said they were more likely to book properties with personalized review responses. Luckily, Reputation Pro arms hoteliers with daily notifications so you can respond to new reviews quickly.

“It’s really important that people get feedback”

says Stacey. Although nearly all reviews for Barefoot Bay Resort and Marina tend to lean positive, she admits the occasional bad review is unavoidable. In those instances, a response can make all the difference.

When describing prospective guests that come upon a negative experience with a reply, Stacey shares “they’re not as put off by that, because we’ve given a response on why this guest wasn’t happy and it’s great that we can give our feedback.”

Improve the guest experience

Finally, it’s essential to understand the true impact of online reputation management on your hotel business strategy.

With Reputation Pro, Barefoot Bay Resort and Marina gained access to insights like review sentiment analysis, category review drivers (e.g. service, cleanliness, amenities) as well as a comparison of those with its competitors. Stacey is able to track how her hotel reviews are growing and how this impacts ranking and bubble score.

Take a look below for a view into how Barefoot Bay Resort and Marina was able to drive successful results.

Results

Over the course of one year, Barefoot Bay Resort & Marina collected 54 new reviews. 75% of those reviews were acquired thanks to Reputation Pro.

In addition to increasing online reviews, this hotel successfully averaged a 4.7-bubble score.

To put things even more in perspective, among 95 competing hotels in the Clearwater Beach area, Barefoot Bay Resort & Marina has stayed consistent in terms of its ranking at #4.

Final Thoughts

Hotels can’t afford to neglect their online reputation. But managing it can be a time-consuming task. Which is why Tripadvisor created Reputation Pro.
If you’re looking to stand out from the competition and help your guests share their memorable experiences, sign up below to learn more.