Responding to Reviews

Why Respond

A thoughtful response is one of the highest-leverage things you can do. Customers reading reviews before booking pay almost as much attention to your replies as to the reviews themselves. Responding consistently tells prospects that you are engaged, fair, and professional — whether the review was glowing or painful.

Writing a Response

1. Open the review from the Reviews page or the trailer detail page.
2. Click Respond (or Edit Response if you have a draft).
3. Choose a tone for the response.
4. Write your message, up to 1000 characters.
5. Click Save as Draft or Publish.

The Tone Selector

The tone selector sets the voice of the response — especially useful when you use AI drafting. Three options:

Professional

Measured, factual, businesslike. Use this as your default for neutral or positive reviews, and for negative reviews where the customer was unreasonable.

Warm

Friendly, personable, a bit conversational. Use for positive reviews where you want the tone to match the customer's enthusiasm.

Apologetic

Acknowledges mistakes, takes responsibility, offers a remedy. Use for legitimate complaints. Do not use it defensively — if you are not actually sorry, the customer will notice.

If you write your own response from scratch, the tone selector is purely for AI drafting; your written text is published as-is.

The 1000-Character Limit

The limit exists to keep responses readable and focused. In practice, the best responses run 300 to 600 characters — about three to five short sentences. If you need more space, call the customer. A public response is not the place to relitigate a long dispute.

Draft vs. Publish

Save as Draft keeps the response private and editable. A draft badge shows on the review in the admin list so you know there is work in progress. You or a teammate can come back to it.

Publish makes the response immediately visible:

• Under the review on your public trailer detail page.
• In the customer's review email receipt (they are notified).
• In review exports and any public embed widget on your website.

Published responses can be edited once, within 72 hours, after which they become locked for integrity. An Edit action is still logged in the audit trail.

What to Include

Good responses tend to share structure:

1. Thank them by name for taking the time to review.
2. Acknowledge the specific issue they raised — by naming it you show you read carefully.
3. Explain or apologize briefly, without making excuses.
4. Offer a path forward — a direct contact, a future discount, a promise to improve.

Avoid:

• Generic text that could apply to any review.
• Blaming the customer.
• Discussing specifics better handled privately (refund details, personal info, legal).
• Arguing.

Visibility on the Public Trailer Page

Every published response appears directly beneath the review, visually set apart as Response from the owner, with your organization name and the date posted. The response is indexed by search engines and counts toward the social proof on your public listing.

Tips

• Respond within 48 hours. Speed signals that you care and keeps the conversation relevant.
• Match length to importance. Two sentences for a 5-star, a longer structured reply for a 1- or 2-star.
• Have a second person review responses to negative reviews before publishing — a second pair of eyes catches tone drift.