How to ask for campsite reviews, and how to answer a bad one

Your campsite's reviews page is a sales meeting you never attend. One evening a guest picks up their phone, looks at your score, the latest reviews and especially the bad ones, and then decides. You're probably cleaning a toilet or fixing a hose at the time.

In this post we look at three things: how to ask for reviews, how to reply to a bad one and what readers actually pay attention to. We explained why your review score is direct revenue in our guest experience post. Here we get into the practical side.

What readers are looking at

According to a 2017 study by the Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University, about 95 per cent of shoppers read reviews before buying. The same study has another interesting finding: the likelihood of purchase peaks at ratings between 4.0 and 4.7 and starts to fall as the score approaches 5.0. A perfect score looks too good to the reader.

The study is about retail products, not campsites. But what it tells a campsite owner is clear: a few bad reviews won't sink you. What sinks you is what's written underneath them.

In a survey Tripadvisor commissioned from Ipsos MORI and published in 2019 (23,292 Tripadvisor users in 12 markets), 89 per cent of respondents said a thoughtful reply to a negative review improved their impression of the business. And 77 per cent said they were more likely to book when owners replied to reviews personally. Since the platform commissioned the survey itself, it's worth keeping a little distance from the figures, but the direction is consistent.

An independent study shows something similar. Research by Davide Proserpio and Georgios Zervas, published in Marketing Science in 2017, found that hotels that started replying to reviews on Tripadvisor saw their rating rise by 0.12 stars on average, and the number of reviews go up by 12 per cent. According to the researchers, the rise comes not from better hotels but from unhappy guests being less quick to write a bad review where they know they'll get an answer. There's a side effect too: negative reviews of hotels that reply become fewer but longer.

How to ask for a review

There's nothing wrong with asking for a review. But timing and manner matter.

• Timing: within 24 hours of departure. The guest is home, the washing is in the machine, but they can still smell the campfire. A week later they've moved on to something else.
• Channel: whichever channel the booking came through, with a single link. Sending three links ("could you also write on Google, Tripadvisor and Instagram?") usually ends with a review on none of them.
• Tone: short and personal. "Thank you for staying on pitch 4. A few sentences about your stay would help a small business like ours a lot" gets more replies than a long text that smells of a template.
• Don't cherry-pick: it's tempting to send the review link only to guests who seemed happy. Google's contribution policy allows businesses to ask for content that reflects a genuine experience, without trying to influence it. Offering a discount, a free night or a gift in exchange for a review is banned, and so is offering incentives to get a bad review removed.

On the Turkish side, the rule has become clear too. At the time of writing, an amendment published in the Resmî Gazete (Official Gazette) on 1 July 2026 and in force since 1 August 2026 means the Ticari Reklam ve Haksız Ticari Uygulamalar Yönetmeliği (the Regulation on Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices) explicitly bans fake consumer reviews. For details and the current version, see the announcement from the Ticaret Bakanlığı (Ministry of Trade). Asking a friend or relative to "just leave a five-star" is no longer only an ethical question.

Replying to a bad review in four steps

Bad reviews get read at night, and the reply often gets written that same night. That's exactly what not to do. Write it the next morning, after your coffee.

1. Say thank you and restate the problem in your own words. The guest sees they've been understood, and other readers see that you understand the problem.
2. Accept the part where they're right. If the hot water really did run out, say it ran out. Don't write a paragraph of excuses.
3. Say concretely what you changed. A sentence like "we've installed a second water heater" is far more convincing than "we have taken the necessary measures".
4. Move the conversation somewhere private. Give a phone number or email address. Don't carry on the argument on the reviews page.

Follow the same order for reviews you think are unfair, just soften the second step: "Our records look different, and we'd like to talk to you directly."

Example reply template

The text below is a template, not a reply written to a real guest. Fill in the square brackets for your own situation, and each time write at least one sentence specific to that review.

Hello [guest's name], thank you for writing. The hot water running out in the showers on the evening of [date], leaving you cold at the end of a tiring day, really shouldn't have happened, and you're right. That week we were busier than expected and our capacity wasn't enough. Since then [the concrete change, for example: we've added a second hot water tank]. If you'd like us to make up for that evening, or there's anything else you want to tell us, you can reach me directly on [phone or email]. [Name], [business name]

Notice what this template doesn't do: we don't blame the guest, we don't say "our other guests were very happy", and we don't ask them to change their review in return for a discount.

Reply to good reviews too

A page that only replies to bad reviews looks defensive. Write short replies to good reviews that don't repeat themselves. Pick up on a detail in the review, for example: "We love the hedgehog your daughter spotted at night too. Her name is Fıstık." Replies like these show your page is run by a human.

What a campsite in Türkiye can take from this

• The day after departure, send a short thank-you message with a single review link.
• Offer nothing in return for a review, don't pick who gets asked, and don't have people you know write reviews.
• Reply to a bad review within 24 hours, but after a night's sleep, and follow the four steps.
• Use the template as a base, but add a sentence specific to that guest every time.
• Write the complaints that keep coming up on a list, and fix those first between seasons.

Most reviews come through digital channels. We explained how a small campsite can use them in how small campsites win online.

teknovan.io is software that lets campsites track post-departure thank-you and review messages alongside the booking.

Sources

• TripAdvisor Study Reveals 77% of Travelers More Likely to Book When Business Owners Respond to Reviews, Hospitality Net
• Want to improve your business's online ratings? Make sure to respond to reviews, INFORMS
• How Online Reviews Influence Sales, Spiegel Research Center
• Prohibited and restricted content, Google Maps contribution policy
• Amendments to the Regulation on Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices, Ticaret Bakanlığı (Ministry of Trade)

Image credits

Photos illustrate the region; they are not photos of the campsites themselves.

• Manavgat: Alen Ištoković, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons