Reviews Management makes reviews scalable and actionable
In mid-2023, TravelNet Solutions introduced TrackDistribution (formerly Distribution Engine), a channel management solution integrated into their flagship Track platform. This solution greatly enhanced Track’s distribution abilities. Soon thereafter, Reviews Management was added to the platform, providing a simple central dashboard for reading and responding to reviews across the major distribution channels. VTrips, a large and fast-growing property management company out of Ponte Vedra, FL, is among the early adopters of the new solution. Industry veteran Amber Carpenter, VTrips’ head of product, had only praise for the new Reviews Management feature.
Challenges
Like many industry pros, Carpenter was tired of the standard way of managing reviews, which involved a lot of third-party data scraping and tedious manual work. Replying to reviews was done property by property, channel by channel.
Results
“Without Reviews Management, it’s incredibly hard to make your reviews tangible in one place,” Carpenter said. “Everything is in disparate places. So the fact that it’s been brought all together into one place is huge.”
As with their industry peers, managing reviews for VTrips had become a business-critical activity with no clean or easy way to do it. With more than 5,000 properties under management and more on the way, they needed a solution that could scale. Reviews Management was the answer.
“This is the first time we finally have it all in one place and can see at a glance the sentiment on one property. So for me, it makes it more actionable, manageable, and scalable,” Carpenter added.
With this time-saving new tool in place, VTrips plans to implement it with their guest services team to ensure broader scalability. This will help resolve issues quickly because they can pick up the phone and address bad reviews immediately.
Reviews Management can also aggregate reviews for full sentiment analysis—a way to gauge overall tone as positive, negative, or neutral—and make the analysis available in the Track Owner Portal. They also use Track’s survey tool to gather deeper insights. Since 60% of their bookings are direct, a better overall view of property sentiment lets them know how they’re executing.
Game-changing features VTrips already had sophisticated processes in place for sentiment analysis, but thanks to Reviews Management, they’re now using first-party data instead of scraped third-party data. In the long run, this will help them scale up their guest services team and empower them to quickly resolve any issues that arise.
Conclusion
Challenging market conditions call for increased efficiency and discipline. By using TrackDistribution’s one-of-a-kind Reviews Management feature, VTrips was able to simplify a time-consuming workflow without compromising on service and responsiveness. The infinite scalability of Track has allowed them to support 6,000+ short-term rental listings and 15+ brands. Learn more about their new approach to reputation management.
