Are reviews important sales tools for wedding venues?
15 minutes with four award-winning UK wedding venues
Do brides and grooms really care about reviews when it comes to wedding venues?
Surely they either fall in love with a venue, or they don’t – right?
You know that your wedding venue is far more than the bricks and mortar it’s made from. It’s about ambience, decor, service and comfort. It’s about supporting a couple in helping them create their dream day.
So reviews count.
They help a couple envisage their big day and decide whether the experiences of other happy newlyweds are the kinds of experiences they themselves want for their wedding day.
Rather than continue to tell you how important reviews are, we thought we’d let four award-winning wedding venues do it for us. Here are their thoughts on the power of reviews…
Woodhill Hall – Bridebook’s Winning UK Wedding Venue 2018
Bridebook: Tell us about your success with reviews so far, as a top UK wedding venue…
We’ve found the value of reviews is paramount to our business.
I think our key to receiving such successful reviews is that we’re a family run business that really gets to know our couples. From day one, they feel like part of the Woodhill family and we really get to know the couple, their family and friends. As a result, couples don’t feel like they’re reviewing a business, as one of our couples explained, it feels like you’re reviewing family. Reviews which are left by our couples always make us smile from ear to ear and we’re proud to showcase them on our website and with providers such as Bridebook.
Reviews also provide such a great opportunity to reflect on the team’s performance as well as allowing us to look back on how great the couples big day was. Often reviews from couples will mention a funny story or an element of the day which really stood out and it helps the team relive how great their day was.
Have you seen/felt the difference reviews make to the number of enquiries you receive? Any stats to support?
100% yes. We continue to be surprised by the number of enquiries we receive by couples who are interested in the venue and have chosen to visit us based on glowing reports from couples who’ve married with us, guests at weddings or even suppliers sharing how nice they found the venue. In 2017, 24% of all our enquiries came from couples who’d read reviews about us and out of those, 74% booked with us which is amazing. If it wasn’t for hearing about or reading a review they may have never visited us at all.
What are the top 3 benefits of having reviews in your personal experience?
- True impartial representations of the venue by ambassadors who’ve been there, done that and enjoyed such a wonderful experience.
- They provide a window into your customer service standards.
- The more you showcase the more weight it adds to how good you and your business are.
Dodmoor House – Bridebook’s East Midlands Wedding Venue of the Year 2018
At which point in the wedding planning process do you ask couples for a review?
We wait until the wedding has finished, about a week or two after (depending on our couples’ travel plans). We find that it’s good to really give them a chance to reflect on all aspects of the wedding and give them time to relive it all.
How do you ask for the review?
We send an email to our couples and also ask them to send over any photos for a blog post or real-life wedding feature. We like to keep our couples involved in the ‘Dodmoor family’ for a long time after the wedding!
What are the top 3 benefits of having reviews in your personal experience?
- It gives potential couples the opportunity to read real, honest opinions about our venue and the service we provide. It helps people to see where we shine and help them make a decision to book us for their dream day!
- Receiving reviews from couples can help us to learn where we can improve. There’s always room for a little improvement!
- We get really excited when a review comes in from one of our couples or a guest at one of the weddings; it really builds up morale within the team and gets us all pumped up to run our next wedding and do it all over again!
The Grand Hotel, Tynemouth – Bridebook’s North East England Wedding Venue of the Year 2018
Have you ever received a negative review and if so, how did you deal with it?
So far I do not think we have had a bad review which is incredible to be able to say.
If we did receive a negative review then we would look at what has been mentioned and act upon this and contact the couple to address any issues.
What are the top 3 benefits of having reviews in your personal experience?
- It is good to get feedback on the hotel and hear back from our couples about their wedding experience.
- It is reassurance that we are doing our job well when we receive glowing reviews.
- It is good publicity for the hotel and for potential brides to see these reviews.
Redhouse Barn – Bridebook’s West Midlands Wedding Venue of the Year 2018
What are the top 3 benefits to having reviews in your personal experience?
Reviews are hugely important to us. We aren’t a huge fan of ‘pushy sales’ techniques and often letting potential couples see the fantastic reviews we have from previous weddings says a lot without us having to.
It gives potential couples a lot of confidence that what we are telling them about the venue and the food is true and often better than expected.
Recommendations are definitely the best form of advertising. I had one couple who visited us recently and the groom was very open and said that he wasn’t originally interested at all in a Barn wedding but his fiancé told him to spend a bit of time researching us (as she was desperate to come for a viewing) and after reading through our reviews on Facebook he knew it was where he wanted to get married before he actually visited!
Who asks couples for a review at your wedding venue?
We never canvass our couples or their guests to review the venue after their wedding so we are very lucky to receive some lovely thank you cards from most couples following their big day and we often upload those ourselves to share the love!
As mentioned above we don’t like to be too pushy and that extends to chasing people after their wedding to write something lovely about us. Generally, couples and their guests will take it upon themselves to review on social media or send us something in the post. It’s a testament to the fantastic service and hard work of the team here that people will go out of their way to review the venue, food and service.
Where do you showcase your reviews (online and offline)?
We like to showcase our reviews on all of our marketing platforms and social media. I try to keep these updated as much as possible with the latest reviews.
I don’t tend to like using older reviews as a lot can change in a couple of years so It’s nice to show new couples that this review was from a wedding from the summer just gone rather than from 5 years ago!
We use Facebook a lot already and I am starting to get better with Instagram which I would like to post more reviews on but I’m just getting to grips with it.
Offline we have a big file in the Barn full of all the thank you cards we receive so when potential couples come to view the Barns they can have a flick through!
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Reviews are the difference between converting an enquiry or a venue visit into a booking, or not.
Take our advice and the advice of award-winning, expert wedding venues today, and start harnessing the power of reviews for your wedding venue.
Looking for more wedding industry trends and couple insights? Head to the Bridebook Business Hub, the home of wedding industry knowledge.
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