How to claim and manage your hotel's listing on Tripadvisor

This is OneHorizyn's own guide, written from Tripadvisor's help pages. Tripadvisor asks everyone who manages a listing to have a Tripadvisor member account first, then to register as the hotel's representative and verify it, which it says adds a layer of security for its community and for the hotel's account.

1. 1Sign in to Tripadvisor with a member account, or create one. Use an email address that belongs to the hotel rather than to one member of staff, so the listing doesn't leave with them.
2. 2Go to tripadvisor.com/Owners, Tripadvisor's page for owners, and type your hotel's name in the “Business name” search box.
3. 3Select your hotel, click “Claim listing” and follow the instructions.
4. 4Choose how to verify: a government photo ID, or a phone call to the hotel.

If the search doesn't find your hotel, open its own page on Tripadvisor and click “Claim Your Listing” in the “Is this your Tripadvisor listing?” section at the very bottom of the page.

Tripadvisor recommends the photo ID route as the quickest:

1. 1Upload a clear photo of a government ID, such as a passport or a driving licence.
2. 2Take the face verification photo it asks for, with your phone or computer's camera.
3. 3Wait while the two are checked, which Tripadvisor says takes less than a minute.
4. 4When Tripadvisor shows its success message, click “Continue” to enter the Management Center.

• If a document needs a closer look, Tripadvisor emails you within 72 hours to say whether you are verified. If the photo was unclear, it asks you to try again.
• The phone route calls the number on your listing. It fails when the hotel was added to Tripadvisor recently, has no phone number listed, or has changed its number.
• To fix the number, open your hotel's page, click “Improve this listing” in its About section and suggest the right one. Tripadvisor checks it against your website and other pages online, and emails you once it is changed, so make sure your own website shows the same number.

• Not listed: a hotel's representative asks for a listing on Tripadvisor's page for listing a business, after checking that the hotel meets Tripadvisor's listing guidelines. Requests are normally handled within 3 to 5 working days, and you are told by email if you were signed in when you asked.
• Listed twice: if you manage one of the two, open the Management Center, click “Help” at the bottom right and tell Customer Care in the chat. If the pages are duplicates, Tripadvisor says the change shows within 1 to 2 days.
• A duplicate you don't manage: click “Improve this listing” on that page, below its “Hotel links” section.

Tripadvisor rebuilt the Management Center with its main jobs as tabs in a menu down the left. The parts its help pages send you to are:

• Business Info: your name, address and map pin, amenities, and contact details.
• Photos & Videos: adding and managing your own photos.
• Reviews: replying to reviews and reporting them.
• User Permissions: who else at the hotel can sign in.
• Promo Tools & Awards: free window stickers, website widgets and your awards.
• Billing, at the top right: invoices for anything you pay Tripadvisor for, seen only by the billing owner.

Your Listing ID is shown on the overview page. For almost everything else, Tripadvisor's help ends the same way: sign in to the Management Center and click “Help” at the bottom right to chat with Customer Care. When Tripadvisor introduced the new Management Center, Analytics, User Permissions, Promo Tools & Awards and Billing were still in the old one, and some widget pages still have a button that takes you there.

Tripadvisor says to fill in your details as completely as you can and keep them up to date, and warns that missing details may affect a hotel's chance of a Travelers' Choice award. Every change is checked first, which can take up to 2 business days.

To change the name:

1. 1In the Management Center, click Business Info in the menu.
2. 2Click the General Information panel and change the Business Name field.
3. 3Click “Add Language” to add the name in another language or script, if you need to.
4. 4Click “Save”.

To change the address or the map pin, click Business Info, then the Location panel, enter the street name and number in the Street Address field and the postal code in the Zip Code/Postal Code field, drag the Map Pin to the exact spot and click “Save”. The town and state can't be changed there: if the hotel has moved, ask Customer Care in the chat.

To change your facilities, click Business Info, then the Amenities section, choose one of the five groups (Property amenities, Accessibility, Languages, Room features, Room types), tick or untick each amenity and click “Save”. If a facility shows an exclamation mark, guests have said it wasn't available, and Tripadvisor removes it unless you confirm that you offer it.

Tripadvisor's rules for these details:

• The name is the hotel's official name, as on its website and signs, with no stars or other symbols. A new name must already show on your website, your social media and Google, where Tripadvisor checks it.
• The address is the street name and number only: no directions, no cross streets, and no postal code, town or state in that field.
• The website address is the hotel's own official website, written in full.
• The description is general and accurate, with no promotional language.
• No swearing, nothing untrue and no marketing text in any of them.

A hotel's phone number, email address and website show on its Tripadvisor page only when it pays for Business Advantage, Tripadvisor's paid programme for hotels, which also lets a hotel post a special offer, highlight a favourite review and show its favourite photos first. The rest of your listing is managed without it.

1. 1In the Management Center, click Photos & Videos in the menu.
2. 2In the All photos section, click “Add photos”.
3. 3Choose the photos from your computer, or drag them into the uploader.
4. 4Write a description of each in the Description box.
5. 5Click “Upload”.

Tripadvisor's moderators check each photo, which can take up to 2 days. You can ask for one of your photos to be the main photo on your page; if Tripadvisor approves it, it shows within up to 5 days, and Tripadvisor doesn't promise to approve any photo.

• Show the hotel itself: Tripadvisor says photos of the property help travellers more than photos taken from it, such as a view.
• Leave out photos of nearby places and of staff, and any contact details in the photo.
• No main photo that is mostly people, no added text, no watermarks, no collages, and no logo or business card as the main photo.
• Each photo up to 15 MB for a hotel, as .gif, .jpg, .bmp or .png. Tripadvisor says landscape photos look better than portrait ones, and recommends a shape between square and 4:3.
• Nothing blurry, dark, sideways, or altered in a way that changes what the place looks like.

Tripadvisor lets a hotel post one reply, which it calls a management response, under each review, where anyone can read both. To reply:

1. 1Sign in to the Management Center and click Reviews in the menu.
2. 2Click the review you want to answer.
3. 3Type your reply in the response box below it.
4. 4Click “Submit”.

A reply that meets Tripadvisor's guidelines can take up to 2 days to appear, longer if it needs a closer look. A reply can't be edited: to change one, open the review and, under Response Published, click “Delete Response”, then submit a new one. It disappears at once, so copy the text first. Tripadvisor's guidelines for replies:

• Your own words: no emails from the guest or anyone else, and no quotes from reviews.
• Nothing commercial: no promotions, no offer of gifts, services or money, and no links unless they belong to the review.
• Stick to the review: no opinions on politics, religion or wider social issues, no threats, no pressure on the reviewer, no accusations of review fraud, and nothing addressed to Tripadvisor staff or about its policies.
• Privacy: no guessing who the reviewer is, and no names, addresses, phone numbers or other details that identify anyone.
• Easy to read: no lists or bullet points, which don't show in replies, and no unreadable machine translation.

To report a review that is on the wrong hotel, looks fake, is unlawful or breaks Tripadvisor's guidelines:

1. 1In the Management Center, click the Reviews tab.
2. 2Click the review.
3. 3Select “Report Review” on the right.
4. 4In the form, give the reason, add your comment and click “Submit”.

Tripadvisor's moderators decide, and tell you the outcome and how to appeal within 3 to 5 working days. If a guest threatens a bad review, or offers to change one, to get a refund, a discount or anything else they aren't owed, Tripadvisor counts it as blackmail: report the published review through the chat with the complete, unedited emails or screenshots, showing the sender and the date.

1. 1In the Management Center, click User Permissions in the menu.
2. 2On the Verified owners page, click “Add new user”.
3. 3Enter the person's email address and choose their role.
4. 4Click “Send Invite”.

The person confirms their role by email and accepts Tripadvisor's terms, and can then sign in. To change someone's role, click the pencil beside their name; to remove someone who has left, click the bin and confirm. The page lists everyone with access, their role and the date they were given it, and may ask for your email address and password again first.

Promo Tools & Awards in the Management Center has four parts: Window stickers, Website widgets, Printed branding and Digital branding.

• Window stickers: you can order two stickers asking guests to review you. The “Review us on Tripadvisor” sticker carries a QR code that opens your page.
• Website widgets: free badges and boxes for your own website, among them your rating, snippets of recent reviews, and a Write-A-Review widget that starts a review from your site. Click the widget, copy its code into your web page, or use “Email this code” to send it to whoever looks after your website. A website may use up to 50.
• Tripadvisor says the Website widgets, Printed branding and Digital branding pages are still being moved to the new Management Center, and each has a button to the old one meanwhile.

Ask every guest the same way. Tripadvisor doesn't allow offering anything for a review, or steering only happy guests to it (see the guide on improving your Tripadvisor ranking).

• After a major renovation, you can ask for every review and photo from before it to be removed. The changes must be structural and obvious: new carpets, paint or signs don't count. Send a press release, a letter from the city or tourist board, or official papers such as building permits through the chat. Once approved, the change shows within 5 business days.
• After a change of owner, you can ask for every review, photo and reply from before it to be removed. Send a press release or newspaper article, the deed, the receipt of purchase, the transfer of ownership, or a lease of at least 3 years, showing the hotel's name or address, the date of the change, and the names and signatures of the old and new owners.
• Both removals are permanent, can't be undone, and Tripadvisor warns they may affect your ranking.
• Your star rating isn't Tripadvisor's: it comes from national rating bodies in the countries Tripadvisor names, and from Giata everywhere else, India included. Tripadvisor's staff can't change it, so a wrong rating is corrected with whoever gave it.