Reply to Booking.com and Tripadvisor reviews: where to post and what to write

On Booking.com from the extranet or the Pulse app; on Tripadvisor from the Management Center, the property’s control panel. Every reply is moderated before it appears: Booking says up to 72 hours, Tripadvisor up to 2 days, longer if the reply needs a closer look.

I would read the review to the end before opening the box. Start with the greeting and you risk reaching the signature without answering the question. And there is nearly always a question, even when the guest leaves out the question mark.

On Booking.com you can reply to reviews that have a title or a comment, in the review’s language or in English: replies in other languages are not published. So a score with no text cannot be answered.

To correct the text, Booking’s steps are: extranet, Guest reviews, the approved reply, Edit, Submit. Pulse is for writing new replies; edits and removals happen in the extranet only.

From the Management Center, under Reviews. Tripadvisor’s guide lets you filter unanswered reviews by rating, date and language; before you submit you also choose the name you sign with and your role at the hotel.

Tripadvisor allows one management response per review, and it cannot be edited. If you spot a mistake, copy the text and delete the reply: Reviews, the review, Published response, Delete response. It goes at once, and you can send a new one.

Check the name before you click. Changing your username changes the signature on future replies, but the ones already posted keep the old name. Better to notice before the general manager signs off with a holiday nickname.

Long enough to answer what the guest wrote. Tripadvisor says there is no character limit but asks you to be concise; Booking also recommends short, precise replies.

To see what “short” means in real cases, on 20 October 2026 we counted the words in 5 Booking.com and Tripadvisor reviews and in the replies Lumina wrote, among the 12 Replies examples:

The Grindelwald review makes the point on its own. In 8 words the guest says 2 things: they loved the mountain view, and the wifi was weak. The reply thanks them for the view and acknowledges the connection: in 37 words it has done its job, with no history of the hotel.

To make it more useful I would add what you did about the wifi, once the team has done it. Promising a fix before then means writing an ending you don’t know yet.

At Fauchon, by contrast, the guest lists the noise, the wardrobe space, the floors and the trouble with an early arrival, and the long reply has a reason. I would trim it where it repeats the apology, and keep every problem someone needs to go and check.

First work out what they did experience: the booking, the cancellation, the arrival, the payment, the messages with the hotel. Not having slept there does not, on its own, tell the whole story.

Booking’s rules say a guest who arrives can review the property even without completing the stay. If a booking is cancelled before check-in the guest normally gets no review form; but the same page accepts reviews with information useful to future guests, about communication with the hotel or the trip. So a removal request has to explain the specific case.

Among the Replies examples is Maria, who in October 2026 describes a change of dates refused and 300 Swiss francs charged without a night in the hotel. The reply acknowledges her frustration and offers to go through the booking and the messages together, privately. It does not announce a refund nobody has authorised, and it does not pretend the stay took place.

Tripadvisor asks for a first-hand experience of the business: a visit, a booking, the facilities or another real interaction. A brief phone call on its own is not enough. “Never stayed here” and “never dealt with us” are 2 different claims: in your report, write the one you can prove.

You report it by telling the platform which rule was broken, with the facts. On Tripadvisor the route is Management Center → Reviews → the review → Report Review, and the moderators come back to you, with any options for appeal, within 3-5 working days.

On Booking a removal request starts from the extranet → Inbox → Booking.com messages → contact options → Guest reviews, with the booking number and the reason. Booking removes a review if the guest confirms they cancelled and never arrived, if the hotel cancelled at least 24 hours before check-in, if it was a no-show and the review describes no experience, or if the guest is using the review to blackmail you, in which case written evidence is needed.

Replies have rules too. Tripadvisor’s are very concrete: no accusing a guest of a fake review, no threats or pressure on the writer, no pasted private messages, nothing that could identify them; no gifts, services or money offered, no advertising or off-topic links. And plain text, with no lists or formatting the box will not show.

I would write: “We are sorry about the disagreement over the cancellation. We would be glad to go through the booking conditions and the messages with our front office manager.” The receipt, the surname and the booking number go to the support team, not to the audience.

As soon as the colleague who knows the case has the facts straight. In BrightLocal’s survey of February 2026, of 1,002 American adults, 32% expect a reply by the next day and 81% within a week.

For Tripadvisor’s ranking the rule is written down: management responses are not factored in, which looks at the quality, quantity, recency and consistency of reviews. You reply so the next guest can see how you behave when something goes wrong.

AI assistants read reviews too: in the spa conversations we ran on 26 and 27 September 2026, no traveller asked about reviews, yet the assistant went looking for them unprompted for 39 hotels out of 46. How a check like that changes the choice of hotel is in our study of 3,288 answers from ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

Lumina Replies reads the last 60 days of public reviews on Google, Booking.com, Tripadvisor and Expedia and writes the replies in your hotel’s voice, in the guest’s language or in the one you usually use. Your team reads them, edits them and posts them where the guest wrote; for Booking, choose the review’s language or English.

The first reply is free. Each reply costs 1 credit, and so does another version, a rewrite with your note or a translation. After that you buy credits as you need them: 25 for €4.50, $5, £4 or CHF 4, 120 for €18 or $20, 350 for €45 or $50.

I would start with the review you keep putting off: the long one, the one in a language you don’t speak, the one that made you angry. Add what you know and the guest didn’t write, then read the reply back as if you were about to book.

If the same problem keeps coming back, the work moves from the reply to the hotel itself: that is in our guide to hotel reputation management. And to know which complaints to look for under the high ratings, there is our analysis of 105,887 reviews and what guests complain about.