How Top VRMs Use Guest Feedback to Drive More Bookings and Five-Star Reviews

Guest feedback is one of the most powerful yet most underused resources in the vacation rental industry. Every review gives you a window into what guests value, what frustrates them, and what ultimately drives them to book again.

But making sense of that feedback isn’t easy. Between Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Expedia, Google, Yelp, and other channels, managers are flooded with data that’s often scattered and inconsistent. It’s no wonder that only 10% of vacation rental managers have a strategy to track, analyze, and report on their guest reviews… 

But what if VRMs did have a unified systems and processes to organize and analyze reviews? What if they were able to build an air-tight feedback loop between vacation rental guests and business operations? How much more clear would the roadmap for improvement and growth be?

In this blog, we’ll break down how best-in-class managers make the most of their guest feedback, and how they harness reviews to drive meaningful improvements across marketing, operations, owner relations, and more. 

1. Using Feedback to Catch Issues Early

Guest feedback is often the first signal that something needs your attention.

Many top managers use mid-stay check-in messages to catch problems before they appear in reviews. Automating a simple “How’s everything going so far?” message through your guest messaging tools helps surface small issues before they become larger complaints. Things like "slow Wi-Fi" or "missing kitchen utensils" can snowball into negative experiences if ignored. And negative experiences lead to poor guest reviews. Not only do these mid-stay inquiries showcase proactivity and attentiveness, but it can often  turn a potential 4-star review into a 5-star experience.

When organized with best-in-class and connected tech infrastructure, review insights can become instantly actionable. Imagine creating maintenance tasks directly from a guest review? No toggling back and forth between tools, or playing phone tag with your team. Doing so results in faster responses, smoother operations, and happier guests.

2. Identifying Patterns to Prioritize Improvements

Beyond fixing small issues, guest feedback can reveal broader themes that impact your brand reputation over time. This means having a process to make sense of big data; including collecting and storing reviews that come in from various sources, tagging them with topics like cleanliness, communication, location, etc., and of course filtering and analyzing. 

Only then do patterns become easy to identify and track. Once you know which issues appear most often (and in what specific scenarios they occur), you can prioritize them across your portfolio and address the root causes, not just the symptoms. Over time, this feedback loop strengthens your brand, ensures consistency, and elevates the quality of your management services.

3. Leveraging Reviews to Power Your Marketing

Five-star reviews are the most authentic and powerful marketing content and inspiration you’ll ever produce. The feedback comes straight from customers while they’re experience with your product is top of mind. It’s no wonder that 29% of travelers leverage reviews as their final booking factor. 

The first way your reviews can fuel guest acquisition is by uncovering themes and correlations within your 5-star reviews. If your brand consistently gets accolades for ocean views, local touches, seamless communication, then you should highlight these factors in your website copy, property listings, digital ads, and more. Lean into what makes your brand special. There’s a good chance that your future guests will be attracted to the things your past guests loved.

Some managers go a step further by automating the flow of 5-star reviews back to property listing pages on their website. Featuring guest quotes like “Perfect family getaway” or “Spotless and cozy” can increase engagement rates and conversions. Guests trust other guests more than any ad copy, and surfacing those authentic voices reinforces credibility across channels.

When real feedback shapes your marketing, it builds instant trust and helps you stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.

4. Building Trust With Existing (and New) Owner Clients

Guest reviews don’t just inform guest experience; they are also powerful communication tools to showcase your value to current owner clients, and acquire new ones.

When feedback consistently mentions worn-out furniture or outdated appliances, you can leverage your aggregated review data to illustrate exactly what needs improvement. Combined with transparent owner reporting, that feedback becomes a data driven business case. 

When owners can see that a simple furniture upgrade or kitchen restock results in higher guest satisfaction and repeat bookings, they’re more willing to invest in improvements. Over time, this approach not only raises average daily rates (ADRs) but also increases owner retention and satisfaction. That kind of clarity fosters stronger relationships and shows homeowners that every decision you make is grounded in real guest data.

Market leading VRMs don’t stop there, though. They often leverage their software tools and processes when meeting with prospective new owner clients. Doing so showcases their attention to detail and brand control, and can often impress (and help convert) owner clients. 

5. Use Guest Feedback to Improve Team Performance

Great management companies don’t just read reviews; they learn from them.

By connecting review data to specific property manager leads and staff members, guest feedback can help identify those consistently outperforming and those where additional training might help. Recognizing high performers keeps your team motivated, while spotting patterns early prevents recurring issues from slipping through.

For example, if multiple guests mention exceptional cleanliness, managers can identify which housekeeping team handled that property and recognize their work. Over time, these small moments of acknowledgment build morale and set a clear performance benchmark across your team.

These insights tie directly to automation and team communication, allowing you to close the loop between guest feedback and internal improvement.

Ready to Turn Your Guest Feedback Into Growth?

Hostaway and Reva work together to help vacation rental managers harness the full power of guest reviews automatically, intelligently, and at scale. Connecting the two platforms empowers managers to put their data to work, and:

• Automatically sync new reviews, properties, and reservations across Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and other channels into one user-friendly dashboard 

• Reply to every review from one place within Reva’s dashboard

• Leverage AI-powered insights to uncover trends, strengths, and opportunities

• Easily sync 5-star reviews from Reva onto each property listing page on your website, and in ‘guest review’ modules for more social

If you’re ready to see how integrated feedback management can elevate your business, explore how Hostaway + Reva work together today.

About Reva

Reva is built for hosts and property managers who want sharper control over their guest review strategy. Instead of scattered feedback across OTAs and inboxes, Reva pulls everything into one place and uses AI to spot trends, highlight issues, and surface the moments guests love most. The platform helps you respond faster, understand what’s driving your ratings, and turn great reviews into marketing that actually converts. With thousands of hosts using Reva to analyse and act on guest insights, it’s becoming a go-to tool for anyone who wants their review process to feel organized, intentional, and tied directly to better guest experiences.

This is a guest post from our partners at Reva. Check out our Marketplace page for more information.