Are you trying too hard?

When I’m traveling, I like to look at online reviews to choose my hotel.

Positive online reviews are essential for hotels.

The more positive reviews, the better.

When I travel in the US, the hotel staff never asks me to do an online review.

I receive an automated email after I check out, but the staff isn’t trained to encourage a positive review.

In Europe, we had a different experience.

Every hotel we stayed at brought up online reviews when we checked in, when we checked out, and via an automated survey.

One hotel, in particular, seemed like they were trying too hard.

When we were checking in they asked why we chose the hotel.

They gave us a card showing us where to do our online reviews.

They also gave us two bottles of wine while we were there with two handwritten thank you notes.

The personal touch made us feel welcome (who doesn’t like free wine?)

When we checked out, the clerk gave us a five-minute spiel on the importance of online reviews and she gave us a card with a 10% discount on our next stay.

She said to call her directly instead of booking on an online site like Booking.com, and she…