Another five-star review?! It takes a huge amount of hard work to maintain those high standards of customer satisfaction and continually exceed a visitor’s expectations. Yet some operators seem to have it absolutely figured out – every single time.
But how?!
Not only has a guest got to have an amazing time, but as the operator of an attraction, experience or tour, you’ve also got to leave people feeling great! And therefore, so compelled to share their satisfaction, that they take the time to leave you a review, commentary and sometimes a photo or two – that’s a big ask, even for a guest who was delighted by what you offered.
So what’s the key? I thoroughly enjoyed hearing from some of the winners from the Arival TourReview Spotlight Awards held in Valencia to find out what the secret is. How do they continually score so high on TripAdvisor and Google?
What Encourages Travelers to Leave Good Reviews?
The Arival TourReview Spotlight Awards are based on an analysis of over 10 million customer reviews across seven OTAs and review platforms. This analysis has helped us to answer this question:
What really encourages people to leave a good review, or not?
There’s talk of clever QR code placement, the tiny human touches that really matter and understanding where the guest experience actually starts. There are lots of great insights and tips here that you could take away and make your own. Whether you’re a newcomer or an established business, we all want exceptional reviews and to learn from those who are getting lots of them!
According to the Arival and TourReview research, those motivators can easily be divided into two categories.
- Delighters: Guide quality, experience logistics, food quality (culinary), and personal connection.
- Detractors: Poor value for money, pacing, misleading descriptions, crowding, and lack of tech (especially at attractions).
So let’s find out now what these award winners with top review scores themselves say about successfully attracting positive reviews.
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Five Tips for Success from the Arival TourReview Spotlight Award Winners
The Arival TourReview Spotlight Award winners talked openly about their philosophy around a great customer experience and the secrets of encouraging consistent five-star reviews for their visitor attraction or experience.
Here are five of the best tips that you can take inspiration from:
1. Hire and Train Guides to Give Amazing Experiences
One of the things many of the top-review-earning operators emphasized is the importance of hiring and training guides. For all the work you put into designing and planning tours, marketing your tours and communicating with your guests, it’s the guides delivering the tours that can make or break the experience.
Chris Horsey, founder of The English Bus which won in the Day Tours & Excursions category, puts it this way: “It sounds cheesy,” said Horsey, “but it’s about training guides to give the most amazing experience, every single time. You have to hire people who love what they do.”
There are two key elements to this:
- Hiring the Right People
“Find the right people. Hire people who live for being a guide,” said Horsey. “In this industry, if you don’t love what you do, it’s immediately obvious.”
Horsey stressed the importance of recruitment and finding the right kind of person; someone who loves being a guide and thrives on it is just as crucial as ongoing training.
- Train, Train and Train Again
Horsey emphasized the importance of training guides over and over to deliver amazing experiences every single time.
“Train your guides to give the most amazing experience for every single tour,” he said. “Make them understand that each and every customer matters.”
Learn more about guide hiring and training here: Tour Guide Training: The Best Tips & Tools for Your Guides.
2. Respond to Reviews, both Positive & Negative
Several operators emphasized the importance of responding to reviews.
According to Graeme Bowie from Rabbie’s Tours, another Day Tours & Excursions winner, fast, thoughtful review responses are just as critical as the reviews themselves.
“It’s not just about getting the review,” said Bowie, “it’s how you respond and how well you do that. That’s what keeps the reviews high.”
And while timely and personal responses to reviews help boost ratings, it can be difficult to find the time to do that. Bowie mentions the importance of having dedicated resources – a person or people on your team to consistently monitor and respond to reviews.
Reviews can also help you identify places where your experiences can be improved.
“We listen to our reviews to get better in the future,” shared Martin Popit from To Do In Slovenia, another winner in the Day Tours & Excursions category. “Therefore, we can quickly respond and correct our mistakes (if there are some) as we daily go through newly posted reviews and respond to them.”
How do you respond effectively to negative reviews? Learn more here: Turning Negative Reviews into Opportunities.
3. Connect at All Stages of the Customer Journey
Human touch matters: build genuine connections before and during the tour, and understand the power of conversation. Pre-experience warmth and genuine interaction can lead to loyalty, emotional impact, and five-star reviews, even before a single guide says ‘Hey!’ or ‘Welcome!’
“We’re a small company, so we can afford to have a personal connection with every single guest,” said Ferit Onger of Paris & Beyond Tours, winner in the sightseeing tours category. “That connection often convinces them to leave a review before the tour even begins.”
“The funniest review I ever got wasn’t about the tour- it was about how amazing it was to talk with [Josephine] on the phone beforehand,” Onger said, recounting one of their most memorable and charming reviews.
Kostas Chatzivasileiou of Athens Walks, winner in the Sightseeing Tours category, added: “You don’t need to make the customer feel obligated to leave a review. It’s the worst situation after having a great experience. I believe the only way to receive a positive review from your guest is to value them and listen to them”.
4. Ask for Reviews — and Make It Easy for Guests to Give Them!
“Ask. Just ask direct: please leave a review,” said Lauren Aloise from Devour Tours, which won in the Culinary Tours & Experiences category. “The best experience alone isn’t enough. When guides ask directly, guests want to support them at the end of the tour when they’re on a high. You can’t make it difficult.” Aloise shared that they train guides to explicitly ask for them right on the spot, turning good experiences into genuine support from guests.
Beyond the in-person ask, the right tech can lead to more reviews, whether that’s using QR codes, automations, API integrations or AI. Maybe you’re streamlining your review process, making it easier for customers to ask a question or using simple printed or digital prompts to ask for reviews. Lots of the winners are actively using and exploring new ways to be smarter with tech — and creative with how they ask for reviews.
“We use a QR code at the end of the class,” shared Alexander Wollauz of Gastronomic Arts Barcelona. “Guests can scan it to get all the full recipes for the seafood, the chicken, the sangria workshop… That’s our gift to you. And in return, don’t forget to leave a review, because that really helps us.”
QR codes are handy because they can be placed or printed on a variety of surfaces, from cards the guide hands out to the back of bus seats to even giveaways like bags or water bottles. “We provide complimentary bottled water with a QR code printed directly on the bottles,” shared Popit, “making it convenient and easy for guests to leave reviews with just with one single touchpoint.”
Finally, some operators build time for review-giving directly into the end of the tour. “We design the tour so the last stop is a sit‑down, a relaxed moment where guests are more likely to leave a review,” said Kenny Dunn, Founder of Eating Europe. “We also use QR codes and think about how and when to deliver them. That’s helped a lot.”
5. Provide an Incredible, Memorable Experience!
At the center of five-star reviews is something no amount of tech or strategy can replace: delivering a truly unforgettable experience. This means sweating the small stuff always: the details guests don’t always notice consciously but feel deeply, and creating moments they can’t wait to talk about. From comfort to surprises, to seamless logistics, the best operators go above and beyond to ensure every guest feels valued, cared for, and has a stress-free experience with you.
“We believe that small things matter,” said Popit, “from ensuring comfortable and clean transportation, to including entrance fees to the most popular attractions in our pricing for the best experience, we make sure every guest feels valued and enjoys a stress free journey with us.”
Also, amid all the details, don’t forget why you’re doing this in the first place. As Matthieu Floret of Food Lover Tour put it, “Passion. Transmit passion from what you do, basically… passion, fun and love for what you do.”
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Why are the awards important to our industry?
The Arival community is about learning from our peers, leaders, startups and competitors. Sharing success, best practice and new thinking.
With award recognition created from over 10 million customer reviews across 50,000+ products and 26,000+ operators in Europe, TourReview’s analysis, tech and methodology mean that together we can showcase the best of the best from a customer-first perspective.
Typically, smaller operators tended to get higher reviews. So instead of one winner and ten nominees, this year Arival made all top 10 nominees winners- because the differences were so small. The top 150 operators average 4.88 stars. The top 500? Just 4.70. See the full list of 2025 European Arival TourReview Spotlight Award winners here.
Learn more about the award selection process and methodology here.
More about the data, trends and impact on attractions and experiences.
Here are just some of the trends we’re seeing when it comes to reviews of attractions and experiences:
- More reviews = more bookings, and the virtuous cycle continues- the dream for operators, right?!
- 14+ reviews = 10x conversion over products with 1 review, according to GetYourGuide’s 2025 Travel Experience Trends Tracker. So it really doesn’t take all that many reviews to create growth and reach.
- Google is now #1 for reviews, surpassing TripAdvisor, according to Arival’s 2025 Experiences Traveler study. (How will AI assistants change that over the next 12 months though?)
What’s clear to me is that excellence isn’t luck. It’s about empathy, consistency, and smart use of tools that make it easy for guests to share their joy.
The good news? All operators, big and small, new and old, can start applying these lessons today. So, how are you ensuring positive reviews?
About the Author
Catherine has spent the last 16 years working in travel and tourism – from holiday rentals and hotels, to attractions, experiences, OTAs and restechs, most recently working with Days Out, Day Out With The Kids, Eureka! And Invisible Cities. She is now Director of Brand Strategy at The Plot.
The Arival TourReview Awards at Arival 360 | Washington, DC
While the Arival TourReview awards presented in Valencia are based on European customer data, we present awards for other regional markets as well — the North American Arival TourReview Awards will be presented at Arival 360 | Washington, DC in October 2025. More details on those awards coming soon- we hope to see you there!
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