The phenomenal growth of social networking sites, travel review sites and blogs has enabled anyone anywhere to have an opinion – good or bad – about your accommodation.  It would be practically impossible to keep tabs on the majority of these opinions, reviews and tweets but thankfully there are three essential and free services to ensure that you know whenever and wherever your accommodation or indeed your area is mentioned.

1. Trip Advisor – get notified of guest reviews

This really is critical as the majority of people looking for bed and breakfasts, guest houses and hotels are influenced by reviews.

Reviews can also let you know what is important to your guests so you need to respond as soon as possible.

Trip Advisor – get notified of guest reviews – What to do

• Go to tripadvisor.co.uk and search for your property using the search box at the top of the page.
• Select your property from the Location Results by clicking on the name.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the “Do you own [Your Property Name] section.
• Then follow the owner’s page link.

2. Google Alerts
Google alerts is a great free service that once set up will send you an email everytime your accommodation or area is spotted by Google’s search engine.

Since setting Google Alerts up myself I have found out about local events that I had no idea of and even discovered pictures of my guest house on a personal blog of a guest cycling from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

Google Alerts – What to do

• Go to Google Alerts and sign up for a google account.
• follow the simple set up .  A google alert then takes about 30 seconds.

3. RSS feed for twitter search
It may only allow 140 characters per tweet but the number of tweets and retweets spinning around the planet is mind blowing and the best way to keep tabe on these is by using a RSS reader. I personally use Omea Reader which is free.

Twitter search unlike Google or Facebook allows real time searches.

RSS feed for twitter search – What to do

• Go to http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/reader/ and download Omea reader.
• Go to http://search.twitter.com/ type in [your accommodation's name and area]
• Click the feed tab in Omea Reader (1)  then click the subscribe (2)
• Each time you check Omea click update all – which can be found to the right pf the subscribe button(2)

and the feed should be there ready to set up.

There you go three simple and quick ways to make sure you know when and where someone is talking about your accommodation.