Help Guide. Contents: Customize Your Profile & Preferences. Collecting Guest Reviews. Example Guest Review Invitation

Transcription

1 Help Guide FlipKey and Instant Software have partnered to offer you a seamless guest review service, focused on maximizing the marketing power of guest reviews and making the process easy to save you time. By accessing your reservation history via ISILink, FlipKey makes it easy to send personalized s to your guests, inviting them to leave a review of their rental experience. Simply set-up your account, select your preferences and within days you will be collecting valuable guest reviews for each of your rental properties. These guest reviews will help attract future guests and improve owner relations. FlipKey features a number of tools that help you manage your guest reviews, publish review content on your own site and receive placement on powerful consumer sites, such as TripAdvisor. This Quick Reference Guide provides easy step-by-step instructions to help you get the most out of your FlipKey membership. If you have additional questions, please feel free to myreviews@flipkey.com or call 877-FLIPKEY and an Account Manager will contact you as soon as possible. Contents: Page 2: Page 3: Page 4: Page 6: Page 7: Page 8: Page 9: Getting Started Customize Your Profile & Preferences Collecting Guest Reviews Example Guest Review Invitation Post a Response or Protest a Review Feature Guest Reviews on Your Web Site Add / Remove / Edit Property Information

2 Getting Started Step 1: Select Guest Reviews in your Instant Software WebLink Account A) After logging into your WebLink account select Guest Reviews This will take you to the Property Selection page where you can choose the properties you would like to collect guest reviews for. Step 2: Select Properties A) You can easily begin colleting guest reviews for all your properties by selecting the Check/Uncheck All box. It is recommended that you add all properties. B) If you would like to select specific properties you can select / unselect specific units. C) Once you have determined which properties to add to FlipKey, click Save. D) You will be taken to a jump page where you select Manage FlipKey Guest Reviews. By clicking this, you will taken to your customized Guest Review Account. 2

3 Customize Your Profile & Preferences A) Your username and general company information is automatically populated based on the information you maintain within your ISI account. Choose a primary contact for your FlipKey account this will be the first person we contact if necessary for support reasons. B) Select your Guest Review Preferences. By selecting Automatic + Historical FlipKey will send personalized review invitations to your past guests (past two years) and all future guests after they have checked out. This is the recommended option to maximize the value of your guest reviews. C) Fill out the About Us form. Visitors on FlipKey.com read this information to learn more about your business and professional services. Most managers copy the text featured on their website to populate this field, however, you can customize it to your liking. D) Logos are often automatically populated based on your ISI account information. You can always change your logo by clicking the Browse button and selecting a new company logo you may have stored on your computer. E) Select your Affiliations. Select Yes on if you are a current member of VRMA and/or Discover Vacation Homes. To learn more about these organizations please visit and F) Enter you Guest Inquiry Contact details. Reservation inquiries via and phone will be sent to the contact information you provide. Note: Low Review Notification should be the address of a marketing manager. G) Click Save. FlipKey will then begin customizing your account. This process requires downloading all your property pictures and additional account information and can take up to 10 minutes to complete. 3

4 Collecting Guest Reviews Auto Enabled (Go to the next page if you selected Manual as your Guest Review Preference) If you enabled Automatic invitations, a few days following your guests checkout, FlipKey will automatically send, on your behalf, a personalized to your past guests, inviting your guests to leave a review of their rental experience. FlipKey accesses information from your ISI software to determine the exact home the guest stayed in and the appropriate guest for sending the review invitation. There is no action required on your part it s that easy! Privacy Note: FlipKey only accesses guest records to initiate review invitations. FlipKey adheres to a strict privacy policy, which ensures records are never sold or accessed for any reason beyond collecting guest reviews. To read more, please visit A) To further personalize your review invitations select Manage Reviews in the main navigation. B) To add a personal message to your review invitation, select the button Personalize To Your Guests. (e.g. Thanks for staying with Lower Cape Escapes. We offer a 5% discount on future visits for guests that leave a guest review. Just mention FlipKey Reviews when making you next reservation. Hope to see you next year!) C) If you would like to send yourself a test guest review invitation, click the Send Myself a Test button. If the invitation doesn t appear in your inbox within a few minutes check your SPAM filter. FlipKey s are optimized for inbox delivery, however, some SPAM filters are very aggressive. 4

5 Manual (Go to the previous page if you selected Auto as your Guest Review Preference) If you enabled Manual invitations, you must login to your account each time you would like to invite guests to leave a review. To help you save time, FlipKey makes it easy by loading guest s for you. FlipKey accesses information from your ISI software to determine the exact home the guest stayed in and the appropriate guest for sending the review invitation. Read below for more details. Privacy Note: FlipKey only accesses guest records to initiate review invitations. FlipKey adheres to a strict privacy policy, which ensures records are never sold or accessed for any reason beyond collecting guest reviews. To read more, please visit A) To avoid manually typing in all guest s you would like to send review invitations to, you can quickly load s. Simply select your preferred timeframe. B) Click Load C) FlipKey will automatically populate each property with s from guests that stayed with you during your selected timeframe. You can add/remove s by clicking Edit. D) Once you have loaded your guests s click Next. On the next screen you can then enter a personal message that will be added to your invitations. See next page for an example of a real review invitation sent by FlipKey by Big Bear Vacations. 5

6 Sample Guest Review 6

7 Post a Response to a Guest Review or Protest a Review FlipKey makes it easy to manage your guest review content. Many managers foster greater consumer confidence by posting responses to the guest reviews they collect. FlipKey also allows managers to protest inappropriate reviews under certain circumstances. To view your guest reviews and access the Respond / Protest features: Click on the Recent Guest Reviews tab in the main navigation. This will list your guest reviews in the chorological order they were submitted by users. or Click on the Manage Reviews tab in the main navigation. By clicking on the magnifying glass icon ( ) you can access guest reviews for a specific property. A) Click the Respond button. A text window will appear allowing you to write your response. Click Save when you are finished. B) If you would like to protest the review you can click the Protest link. Protested reviews will be removed, however, FlipKey reserves the right to disable this feature if inappropriately used. We recommend not protesting reviews and instead posting a response that states your position. C) Responses that you write will be appended to the original guest review and indicated with a Manager Response (denoted with the pin icon). 7

8 Feature Guest Reviews on Your Web Site FlipKey and Instant Software make it easy to add guest reviews to your website. You can choose from FlipKey s Extension Widgets or customize the widget to your own look and feel by using the FlipKey XML feed. Recommendation: FlipKey s Extension Tools are free and easy to use, however, it is recommended you consult with your webmaster to ensure a fast and easy implementation. Select a FlipKey Extension Widget A) Click on Extension Widgets in the main navigation. B) Reputation Widget: Use this widget on your homepage to show prospective guests the aggregate number of reviews and rating you have collected. C) Property Widget: Use this widget to feature guest reviews on individual property detail pages. Note: Once you have selected the widget or XML feed, contact your webmaster and he/she can copy the HTML code to the proper location on your website. FlipKey Widgets dynamically display a summarized rating of all your guest reviews. As you collect more reviews the widgets automatically update no action is required on your part! This allows you to offer reviews on your website with little effort and at no charge. 8

9 Add / Remove / Edit Property Information Property descriptions, photos, rates and availability are all updated automatically through your ISILink account. After opting-in to FlipKey, FlipKey is able to interface will all the information you enter into ISILink. This saves you time and ensures FlipKey can provide end-users with accurate and up-to-date rental property information. In the event that the information you maintain on ISILink is incomplete or not sufficient, please contact FlipKey by ing myreviews@flipkey.com. We will evaluate your account and provide alternative methods to ensure your rental properties and your management company are properly represented on FlipKey. 9