The Obsession with Reviews Is Making Hotels Too Afraid to Stand Their Ground

There is one phrase I find increasingly irritating to hear in a hotel: “Just give it to them, otherwise they might leave us a bad review.” Not because reviews do not matter. They matter enormously. Not because guests do not deserve to be heard. We must always listen to them. It irritates me because behind that phrase lies something I consider far more serious: we have begun replacing professional judgement with fear.

For years, we fought to give the guest’s voice greater weight within hotel organisations. And that was necessary. Online reputation forced many properties to listen better, react sooner, correct shortcomings and understand that an unhappy guest no longer disappeared silently after check-out. All of that improved Hospitality. But, as happens with so many good ideas when taken to the extreme, we have ended up creating another problem: some hotels appear to make certain decisions with more thought given to avoiding a one-star review than to doing the right thing.

I see it in compensation that nobody considers justified. In upgrades granted simply to end an argument. In charges removed even though they had been perfectly disclosed. In employees being overruled in front of guests who have clearly crossed a line. In rules that cease to apply when someone threatens Google, Booking or Tripadvisor. And, above all, I see it in a phrase I consider corrosive for any team: “Yes, you are right, but let’s give in so they do not write anything.”

That is not guest focus. That is reputational fear. And when fear starts governing decisions, something deteriorates profoundly within the hotel. Because the message we send to the guest is that a threat works. The message we send to the employee is even worse: the rules and your judgement matter only until someone publicly threatens the hotel.

I am not suggesting a return to an arrogant form of Hospitality in which every complaint was treated as a nuisance. Far from it. I deeply believe in listening, apologising when appropriate, compensating generously when we have failed, and turning a poor experience into an extraordinary recovery opportunity. But I also believe something that seems to have become uncomfortable to say: the guest can be wrong. They can exaggerate. They can behave badly. And, at times, they can try to use a review as a tool of pressure.

A bad review cannot be worth more than our judgement

Let us start by acknowledging reality: online reputation has an enormous commercial impact.

That power fully explains why hotels are concerned about it.

So am I.

I read reviews.

I analyse patterns.

I respond.

I investigate.

I ask the team.

I look for the cause when recurring criticism emerges.

And I believe any general manager who ignores online reputation is ignoring one of the best sources of operational information available.

But there is an enormous difference between managing reputation and being governed by it.

Reputation should help us uncover the truth about our operation.

It should not force us to accept any version of events simply because someone has access to a five-star button.

Because we have created a rather absurd asymmetry here.

The hotel must prove.

The guest can claim.

The hotel must document.

The guest can interpret.

The hotel must weigh every word in its response.

The guest can write after an argument, angry, exaggerating a situation or conveniently omitting certain details of the story.

And we, terrified of a possible drop of a few decimal points in our score, sometimes act as though every complaint were automatically legitimate simply because it is public.

No.

A complaint can be public and still be unfair.

A review can be written with great confidence and still be false.

A guest can be angry and not be right.

And a hotel can defend its position without becoming an organisation that lacks guest focus.

I am particularly concerned by the growing normalisation of something akin to reputational blackmail.

I do not even need to refer to explicit threats.

We all know their variations.

“We will see what I write on Booking.”

“I have many followers.”

“I am going to tell everyone about this.”

“I hope you compensate me, because otherwise…”

“Let us see what people think of this on Google.”

The conversation changes immediately.

And in too many hotels, the decision changes too.

That is exactly what should not happen.

If the complaint was legitimate before the review was mentioned, let us resolve it.

If it was not, the threat of publishing an opinion should not magically make it legitimate.

It seems obvious.

Yet we have built entire procedures around fear.

The key word is facts.

What happened?

At what time?

What had been booked?

What information did the guest receive?

What did the employee say?

What policy applied?

Was there actually a failure?

Were other guests experiencing it?

What solution was offered?

That is management.

Not:

“How many followers do they have?”

Not:

“Are they Genius?”

Not:

“What score do they usually give?”

And certainly not:

“Give them something so they leave happy.”

That seemingly pragmatic phrase can prove extraordinarily costly.

Because compensation is not just money.

It is a precedent.

When we compensate for a genuine failure, we are repairing an experience.

Perfect.

When we compensate to buy silence, we are teaching that pressure works.

And some guests learn quickly.

I do not need to turn this into a conspiracy theory about professional complainers. The vast majority of our guests are reasonable. Precisely out of respect for them, we should stop designing policies around a minority capable of using conflict as a negotiating tool.

I find it especially irritating when that concession happens at the employee’s expense.

Let us imagine a simple situation.

There is a clearly communicated policy.

The employee applies it correctly.

The guest protests.

The employee explains.

The guest raises their voice.

The supervisor appears.

The policy is maintained.

Then comes the threat:

“Well, I am going to leave you a terrible review.”

And then someone from management arrives:

“Well, let us make an exception.”

What has our employee just learned?

They have not learned guest focus.

They have learned that doing their job properly does not guarantee that the organisation will support them.

They have learned that rules are negotiable if someone applies enough pressure.

They have learned that conflict must be escalated because real authority does not lie in the procedure.

And the next time, they probably will not defend the policy very strongly.

Why would they?

We have just shown them that we do not defend it either.

Then we will organise a training session on empowerment.

There is a certain irony in that.

We ask people to make decisions.

To exercise judgement.

To protect the business.

To uphold standards.

But when the first sufficiently insistent guest arrives, we strip them of their authority.

That destroys internal trust.

And there is another, even worse effect.

Employees know perfectly well when a complaint is reasonable and when someone is taking advantage of the situation.

Management may believe it is making an intelligent Customer Experience gesture.

The team may see something else:

“Once again, they have rewarded the person who behaved worst.”

That severely erodes a culture.

Because there is something deeply demotivating about seeing an organisation demand infinite patience from an employee while granting virtually anything to the guest who raises their voice loudly enough.

Let us be clear:

hospitality does not mean submission.

Service does not mean accepting any behaviour.

Guest focus does not mean that every guest wish must be fulfilled.

And professionalism does not mean smiling while someone insults a member of our team.

There are limits.

There should be.

Because if we want to build excellent teams, we must offer them more than guest-service training courses.

We must offer them protection when they do their job properly.

And that protection includes being able to tell a guest:

“No.”

Politely.

Respectfully.

With sound reasoning.

But no.

A negative review can hurt; losing our judgement hurts far more

I believe we also make a strategic mistake here.

We treat every bad review as though it were an isolated reputational catastrophe.

It is not.

Consumers are not idiots.

They read.

They compare.

They observe patterns.

They can reasonably distinguish between a succession of guests describing the same problem and one exceptionally angry person recounting an unlikely situation.

In fact, this is precisely one of the reasons why responding well is so important.

This completely changes how we approach an unfair review.

We do not necessarily have to make it disappear.

Sometimes we need to put it in the proper context.

A calm, factual and professional response can ensure that future readers fully understand what happened.

And it is worth remembering something here:

a response to a review is not written primarily for the person who posted it.

It is written for the hundreds or thousands of people who will read it afterwards.

That distinction is fundamental.

Responding does not mean arguing.

Nor does it mean humiliating ourselves.

It means providing context.

If we have failed:

acknowledge it.

Apologise.

Explain what we have corrected.

If there is a legitimate difference in perception:

show empathy.

If the facts differ from those described:

explain them politely.

And if the allegation is false:

defend the hotel.

I do not understand this tendency to write absurdly submissive responses even when we have evidence that a review is untrue.

“We deeply regret not having met your expectations…”

But what expectations?

If the guest requested something they had not booked.

If they arrived four hours before check-in time and demanded an immediate room.

If they intended to use a closed service whose closure had been clearly communicated.

If they insulted an employee because they were not granted an exception.

Is apologising really the only possible response?

We can be polite without declaring ourselves guilty of something we did not do.

Empathy does not require abandoning the facts.

Furthermore, every unjustified compensation has a broader cost than it appears.

It has an economic cost.

It has a cultural cost.

It has a precedent cost.

And it has a cost in consistency.

Because while we generously compensate the guest who threatens us, another guest who experienced a genuine incident, reported it politely and accepted our solution may have received less.

We have then created a rather perverse logic:

aggressive behaviour earns a greater reward than reasonable behaviour.

That does not strike me as Customer Experience.

It strikes me as a terrible incentive policy.

We should also review our unhealthy relationship with scores.

A hotel with a 9.2 does not become a disaster because one negative comment appears.

A robust reputation is built through volume, consistency and time.

If an isolated review seriously threatens our public perception, perhaps the review is not our problem.

Perhaps we simply have not yet built enough positive reputation.

The solution, then, is not to live terrified of every guest.

It is to consistently improve the experience of hundreds of guests.

That is extremely important.

The best defence against an unfair review is not preventive compensation.

It is a solid track record of genuine experiences.

Two hundred satisfied guests are a far better defence than buying the silence of guest number two hundred and one.

But to achieve that, we need to clearly differentiate between three situations that, in my view, some hotels confuse too often.

First: we have failed.

Then let us not argue.

Let us act.

Let us apologise.

Let us resolve it.

Let us compensate when appropriate.

Let us learn.

And let us do everything possible to ensure it does not happen again.

Here, a complaint is an operational gift, even if it is not pleasant to receive.

Second: there is a reasonable difference in expectations.

Then let us listen.

Perhaps the information could have been clearer.

Perhaps the guest interpreted something differently.

Let us seek a reasonable solution without necessarily turning every disagreement into a financial refund.

Third: the guest is not right.

That also happens.

And here we must recover a capability that seems to have been lost:

respectfully holding our position.

That is okay.

The guest may leave unhappy.

I know that sounds almost heretical in certain hospitality manuals.

But sometimes it is unavoidable.

There are guests who will accept no solution other than exactly what they want.

And the fact that they are unhappy does not necessarily mean that we have done anything wrong.

This connects with one of the ideas I consider most important for any general manager:

not every dissatisfaction needs to be eliminated.

Some are the inevitable consequence of upholding a sound rule.

An Adults Only hotel will have guests angry because it does not admit children.

A property with a cancellation policy will have people angry when it applies it.

A fully booked restaurant will have someone upset because they cannot get a table.

A hotel that does not allow certain visitors in guest rooms may receive criticism.

A property can reasonably refuse to refund a non-refundable rate when the agreed terms have been met.

We cannot create policies and then apologise every time we apply them.

If we believe in them, let us defend them.

And if we are unable to defend them before a guest, perhaps we should not have them.

But there is another practice I consider particularly damaging: automatic compensation as a substitute for investigation.

Something happens.

Before knowing exactly what occurred, we already offer breakfast, a discount, an upgrade, a bottle, a refund or points.

Because “we have to recover the guest”.

No.

First, we need to understand what we are recovering and from what.

Good service recovery requires proportionality.

A minor error does not require disproportionate compensation.

Nor does an inconvenience necessarily equate to a refund.

And not every incident must be resolved financially.

Some are resolved by explaining.

Others by listening.

Others by correcting the issue immediately.

Others by offering an alternative.

And some, of course, require clear financial compensation because we have genuinely harmed the guest.

But when money becomes our first resolution tool, we have probably stopped managing and started paying to avoid difficult conversations.

The platforms also bear responsibility.

Hotels need effective mechanisms to challenge false content, threats, conflicts of interest and reviews that breach the rules.

Because the reputation system works only if all parties have reasonable trust in its integrity.

But while those mechanisms exist with greater or lesser effectiveness, hotels have another responsibility:

document.

A significant incident should leave a record.

What happened.

Who intervened.

What was offered.

What the guest refused.

What evidence exists.

What communications were sent.

Not to build case files against guests.

But to be able to properly defend the facts if a radically different version later emerges.

Memory is a terrible reputation tool.

Documented facts are far better.

And, above all, we should stop requiring our teams to absorb unacceptable behaviour to protect a score.

There is a boundary that, to me, should be absolutely clear:

an employee should never feel obliged to tolerate insults, threats, discrimination, intimidation or humiliation because we fear a review.

Never.

If someone crosses that line, our priority must change.

At that point, we are no longer managing a complaint.

We are protecting a person.

And I want every employee to know that the hotel will stand by them when they have acted properly.

If that costs us a star, let it cost us a star.

Because some scores are far too expensive.

One thing is managing reputation.

Another is selling the team’s dignity for one tenth of a point on Google.

And that is where I admit I get angry.

Because afterwards we talk about retention.

About employer branding.

About engagement.

About the difficulty of finding staff.

About how to make young people want to work in Hospitality.

Perhaps we could begin with something rather basic:

do not abandon them when a guest behaves unfairly.

It is impossible to ask for commitment from someone who knows that, at the first conflict, the organisation will protect its score before the person doing their job properly.

I also believe we need to recover a certain managerial calm.

A bad review hurts.

I know.

When you run a hotel and someone publicly criticises something into which you have invested tremendous effort, it is difficult to read it dispassionately.

And even more so when you know that their version does not match what happened.

But responding in anger is as bad an idea as deciding from fear.

We should do neither.

The facts.

Always the facts.

Without sarcasm.

Without personal attacks.

Without disclosing private information.

Without trying to ridicule the guest.

And without apologising for things that did not happen.

That is professionalism.

Not cowardice.

My first recommendation would be to effectively prohibit the threat of a review from changing a decision. The moment someone says, “then I will write this on Google,” the internal question should not be what we can give them. It should remain exactly the same as it was thirty seconds earlier: are they right? If they are, we resolve it. If they are not, we maintain our position. As simple and as difficult as that.

My second recommendation would be to give teams a clear framework for complaints and compensation. Define what they can resolve, what they can compensate, the extent of their autonomy and the situations in which the hotel will maintain a policy even if the guest is unhappy. And then support them. Nothing destroys a manager’s authority more quickly than seeing them properly defend a decision for twenty minutes, only for someone above them to arrive, smile and grant exactly what they had refused.

And my final recommendation is probably the one I care about most: do not confuse an excellent reputation with ensuring that nobody ever gets upset. That is impossible. An excellent reputation is born from thousands of correct decisions, a consistent operation, teams that feel supported, and an organisation capable of recognising its mistakes without inventing others. Listen to every review. Learn from them. Respond to them. Investigate. Improve. But retain some judgement and some character. Because when a Google star weighs more than the facts, your policies and your team’s dignity, the problem is no longer the hotel’s reputation. It is how we are running it.