A review request is part of your customer service. It tells a traveller whether you want an honest account of their experience or simply another favourable comment for the website. For a small agency, that distinction matters when the same team sells the trip, handles a problem and asks for feedback. Give that team a clear process they can use consistently.

Customer reviews for travel agencies need attention at several stages: the request, the public response and any later marketing use. Each stage creates a different decision. A customer posting a comment on Google has not necessarily agreed to appear in your next advertising campaign. Keep those decisions visible instead of treating every review as ready-made promotional copy.

Ask for an honest account of the service

Google’s review guidance allows businesses to request feedback using a review link or QR code. Choose a sensible point in your service and use a neutral invitation. If you ask after booking, make clear that the customer is reviewing the booking experience. An enquiry handled well cannot yet demonstrate how the holiday itself went.

Google Maps’ content policy prohibits incentives in exchange for any review, including discounts or free services. It also prohibits selectively soliciting positive reviews and encouraging changes or removal in return for a reward. A private satisfaction survey should therefore not decide who receives your Google review link. Let customers describe their experience in their own words without specifying a star rating.

Make the invitation easy to recognise as coming from your agency. Keep it separate from an unresolved complaint conversation, which needs attention on its own merits. Give staff a way to record that a request has been sent so several colleagues don’t chase the same person. The aim is a dependable service routine, not a review-count competition.

Understand your responsibility when publishing reviews

The Competition and Markets Authority’s publisher guidance applies to businesses publishing consumer reviews or information derived from them, including material originally collected elsewhere. It requires reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove fake reviews, concealed incentivised reviews and misleading review information. Publishing through a third-party tool does not remove your own responsibilities. The guidance covers policies, risk assessment and processes for investigating concerns.

Google’s prohibition on incentives is distinct from the CMA’s treatment of concealed incentives. Disclosure does not make an incentivised Google review acceptable under Google’s rules. For another review service, check its current rules as well as the relevant consumer-law guidance before considering an incentive. A small agency can give the team a straightforward policy: ask for honest feedback without offering a reward.

Know where reviews appear across your website and campaigns. Record the source of a displayed rating and who checks it when the underlying information changes. If you use a review feed, ask how suspected fake content can be reported and removed. Don’t assume a supplier’s badge answers those operational questions.

Reply without exposing the customer’s booking

A useful public reply acknowledges the point raised and explains the next appropriate step. Check the booking record before discussing what happened, but keep private details out of the response. Google’s reply guidance specifically warns against publishing private information and recommends moving a discussion to a suitable contact channel. Resist the temptation to reproduce an email chain to prove your version of events.

Assign difficult replies to someone who understands the complaint and can arrange follow-up. A promised callback needs an owner and a time the team can meet. If a review appears to breach the platform’s rules, use its reporting process; disagreement alone does not establish that a review is fake. Keep the investigation separate from any attempt to persuade the customer to change their rating.

Luna Marketing can draft replies to Google reviews. Its documented workflow leaves you to check the reply, copy it and post it on Google. Read every suggested response against the customer’s actual comment and the action your team can take. A polished apology that promises the wrong thing creates another problem to resolve.

Keep evidence when reusing a testimonial

The CAP Code requires documentary evidence that testimonials used in advertising are genuine and contact details for the person giving them. Testimonials must relate to the advertised product, while factual claims within them must not mislead. The Code generally requires permission, with specified exceptions for accurate quotations from published sources. Don’t treat those exceptions as permission to reuse every public review in any format.

As a practical default, ask the customer to approve the exact extract, attribution and intended use. Keep that approval with the original comment and any agreed photograph. Shortening a quotation should not change its meaning or remove a qualification. A customer praising your patience while changing dates has not endorsed every supplier or destination you sell.

Be clear about what a selected testimonial represents. Avoid arranging quotations, ratings or review counts in a way that gives a misleading picture. When a review describes an old service or a former product, reconsider where it appears. Your marketing should help someone judge the business you run now.

Use feedback to change the service

Give recurring comments a place in your team review. Repeated uncertainty about balance dates, document access or who to call suggests a process worth examining. Record the change you make and check whether the same confusion appears in later feedback. This turns reading reviews into a useful management task without inventing a sales uplift.

Keep reviews connected to your wider work on profiles and local pages. Your review process should focus on the customer’s experience and what you do with their words. Start by checking the invitation your team sends today.

Five actions for your review process

1. Remove rewards, suggested ratings and selective positive-review invitations from your Google review requests.

2. Give public replies an owner who can check facts and keep booking details private.

3. Record where reviews and ratings appear, then review your policy and process against the CMA’s publisher guidance.

4. Keep original testimonials, permission records and approved extracts together before using them in marketing.

5. Take one recurring complaint into your next team meeting, assign a service change and set a date to check whether it helped.