The season's reviews a West Wales owner still owes a reply

The season finished in Saundersfoot, and the owner drove home to Cardigan with a notebook full of things guests had said. The reviews arrived all summer. Most were read on a phone, between jobs. Almost none were answered.

The same thing happens to a café in New Quay and to a kitchen in Aberaeron, while the guesthouse in Tenby still has last season's reviews open in a browser tab. The reviews pile up, and the pile gets heavier. Every one of them feels as though it needs a proper answer, so none of them gets one.

The loop is the reply, and it stalls because a good reply takes thought. You have to decide what to say to the guest who loved the room but hated the parking. You have to decide how to answer the one that was unfair. Multiply that by forty, on the week you are meant to rest, and the whole job turns into something you keep putting down.

What changes the shape of it is having a draft ready before you sit down. A reply per review, written in your voice, waiting for a yes.

The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)

Assume a season brings about forty reviews, and assume each one takes ten minutes to read, think about and answer.

• 40 reviews x 10 minutes = about 6.5 hours
• Assume a £30 hourly rate
• 6.5 hours x £30 = about £195 of your time for the sitting

With a draft waiting for each review, assume two or three minutes to read it, change a line and approve.

• 40 drafts x 3 minutes = about 2 hours
• 2 hours x £30 = about £60

Both figures are assumptions, not a measured result.

Score it: the three checks

• Hours. Six hours or more in one sitting at season's end, and the same sitting returns next year. A week is long enough to feel that, and it clears the bar.
• Repeat. The pattern is a written page: how you open, how you handle a compliment, how you close, what you never say. A new starter could follow that page.
• Risk-if-wrong. A reply to a mixed review is a tone question. A reply to a complaint about safety or money is a different matter. That decides who checks it.

Try one thing this week (free)

Pick five unanswered reviews, including two awkward ones. Write one line on what you would say to each, and one line on what you would not say. That page tells you by Friday whether the job is hard or only delayed.

Where a person stays

Software can prepare a draft for every review, matched to the place and the booking and your own way of writing. A named person still decides what goes out. The owner knows the site and the guest, and the story behind a bad night cannot be drafted from the outside. Replies that mention refunds, safety, legal matters or a formal complaint stay human and stay approval-only. Nothing is posted unchecked.

FAQ