Are guests more likely to write reviews on specific days of the week?

Online reviews are a huge part of many hotels’ digital strategy. Over the last couple months we’ve looked at how things like words and tone correlate to various ratings, but today we wanted to answer a simple question: Is there a day when guests are more likely to post a review? Here’s what we found.

The Goods
To find our answer we looked at 25,000 reviews posted during the last twelve months for U.S. hotels. We grouped these by the day of the week on which each was posted and found what percentage of total reviews fell on each day.

Once we saw this chart the question quickly became, “how does that compare with occupancy?” So, before we get to what this may mean, let’s combine this result with last week’s occupancy vs check-ins curve and see how it looks.

While both charts peak on the weekends, the reviews curve sees a much flatter shape than that of check-ins. The difference between the peak and valley of the reviews chart is 37%. The difference between the peak and valley on the check-ins chart is 127%.

What This Means
There are two things to consider from this sample. The first is that reviews don’t all happen immediately after or during a vacation. Whatever the catalyst, we see review volume stay relatively had for days after the weekend peak for location-based engagement has passed.

But the other alternative is that while Facebook check-ins may not come from the midweek market, reviews might. Whatever the reason, if more reviews are your goal, there may be something to be said for soliciting those reviews Monday through Friday rather than on the weekends.

Next Week, Another Insight
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