Not so long ago, customers were happy to browse through a colorful brochure and book their next vacation. All they needed were a few postcard perfect pictures to inspire dreams of exotic destinations, adventures and romance. Then, out came the wallet and presto, a booking.

But today’s online customers are pretty demanding. Not only do they want up to date information, pictures and pricing, they want to read reviews from other guests that have used your services. Sometimes, the customer only reads the guest reviews and not any of the marketing material. They trust their friends and other guests more than the advertiser’s pitch.

On RealAdventures, our reports indicate that listings with just one review, get 300% more inquiries than those without a review. Listings that have 5 or more reviews, get 1300% more inquiries.

That’s amazing! I couldn’t believe how much of an impact reviews make on inquiry rates. Incredible.

Reviews are ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL!

I know it may be scary. You might be afraid of getting negative reviews from customers that were just impossible to please no matter you tried. But interestingly, the negative reviews will be far and few between. As long as you are a legitimate business, serving your customers in good faith, you will be able to gets hundreds of positive and glowing reviews. The disgruntled customers will stand out as being impossible and visitors will see through the issue as being them not you.

I can’t encourage you strongly enough to ask your customers to write a review for you. Most will be really happy that you asked them to help you out. It is super easy do on RealAdventures. The customer selects a star rating, enters a comment and clicks submit. Once you approve the review, it is then displayed at the top of your listing page for visitors to read.

To make it even easier for you to ask your customers for that review, we have added a new feature that makes it a snap: Request A Review. This feature lets you enter the customer’s name & email address and send out a nicely formated request for the review with a link to your review page.

The few seconds it takes to send a “Request For A Review” will be returned many times over in the increased inquiries and bookings.

Check out this advertiser’s reviews:

Start asking your customers for reviews!