By Dmitry Kroshka, CEO, Phunware - 10.29.2026
Every hotel has a review response playbook. A guest posts two stars, someone drafts a thoughtful apology, a manager offers points or a discount on a future stay, and the property moves on. It’s professional. It’s often well written. But by then, it’s almost always too late to matter.
By definition, a response to a review posted once the stay is over arrives after the pivotal moments have already passed. The guest has packed up, gone home, and told the story to a few people before typing it out for the world to read.
J.D. Power’s 2025 hotel guest satisfaction study found that just 12% of guests report a problem during their stay, but when they do, satisfaction collapses. And reported problems are only the visible part. Far more guests never complain at all. They simply ask a question, wait a little too long or give up on something they came for. Then they leave and write the review.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Most properties already have what they need to neutralize and reverse a negative review while the guest is still at the hotel and the experience is still in play. Here’s where to look and what to do about it:
1. Treat repeated questions as early warnings.
Guests rarely announce that a stay is going badly. They ask questions instead. Where is the other pool? Is there anywhere to eat after 11? How do I get back to the east tower? One question is just a question. The same guest asking three versions of it in an afternoon is a signal. And when dozens of guests ask the same thing, that is not a guest problem. It is a property problem, whether it’s signage, hours, or a venue nobody can find. Most properties log complaints carefully but let questions evaporate. Every repeated question is a chance to fix something, not just for that guest but for every guest who comes after.
2. Find the friction between the transactions.
Your property management system knows when a guest checked in and what they charged to the room. It says almost nothing about what happened in between: the wrong turn on a long outdoor path, the breakfast line that ate 25 minutes, the amenity they gave up on because it felt too far away. That in-between is where most stays are won or lost, and it rarely shows up in any report. Walk the property the way a first-time guest does, at the busiest hour, and note where movement slows. Ask your front-line staff where guests get lost and what they ask most often. They have that information, but unless someone asks, it rarely gets passed along or acted on.
3. Give the front line the information and authority to act.
The people who deliver great service are often working blind. The front desk doesn’t know that the family on the fourth floor has spent two afternoons at the kids’ pool and asked twice about the luau. If they did, a small, well-timed gesture could turn an ordinary stay into one worth talking about — positively. Service recovery works best during the stay, not after checkout. That requires two things: information reaching the right person while it still matters, and permission for that person to act without escalating three levels up.
4. Use AI to absorb volume and surface signals, not to impersonate people.
AI is well suited to answering the hundreds of routine questions a large property fields every evening, instantly, at the moment of need, in whatever language the guest speaks. At eleven at night, a guest who gets an accurate answer in seconds feels better served than one listening to a phone ring. The same technology can spot patterns across thousands of interactions that no single employee would ever see.
Two guardrails keep it from feeling invasive. First, be honest about what it is. Guests don’t resent automation. They resent a machine pretending to be a person. Second, hand off to a human the moment empathy or judgment is required. Hospitality writer Yossi Wachtel offers the cleanest test I’ve found: if a tool makes the guest’s life easier, deploy it. If it makes your life easier by making theirs harder, find another way.
The review is a lagging indicator.
None of this makes reviews irrelevant. They remain the most public record of a stay, and responding well still matters.
But a review tells you what already happened. Properties that want better ones should spend less energy managing what guests say after they leave, and more attention on what guests are telling them, in a hundred small ways, while they are still on property and forming their opinion.
It’s the hinge between saving face and saving the customer.
Dmitry “Dima” Kroshka is Chief Executive Officer of Phunware (NASDAQ: PHUN), an enterprise software company serving hospitality, healthcare, and other large-property environments. He was appointed CEO in May 2026 after serving as a senior advisor since October 2025, working on growth strategy, product direction, and the company’s next-generation Guest Intelligence Platform. Kroshka brings more than two decades of experience across AI, hospitality technology, marketing technology, SaaS, digital media, and consumer platforms, including leadership and advisory roles with Oracle, FCB Global, FOX Digital Entertainment, Spark Brands, and multiple venture-backed technology companies. He leads Phunware’s 2.0 Strategy, which unifies mobile engagement, indoor location, and AI-driven personalization into a single platform.Are you an industry thought leader with a point of view on hotel technology that you would like to share with our readers? If so, we invite you to review our editorial guidelines and submit your article for publishing consideration.