The management response, and the rulebook it is moderated against
TripAdvisor is the one platform here that publishes a posting guideline for owner replies and then checks every response against it. Half of writing a good one is knowing what a moderator will hand back.
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What a management response may and may not contain
These are lifted from TripAdvisor's own posting guidelines. Three of them contradict the instinct an owner has while reading a bad review.
A management response is posted directly underneath the review it answers and anyone can read it.
It is the most prominently placed owner reply of any platform in this section, which is also why an unanswered run of bad reviews shows so plainly.
No quoted material published elsewhere, including correspondence from a guest or a third party.
The instinct to paste the email thread that proves you right is the fastest route to a response that never appears.
No personal information about anyone, including names, addresses and phone numbers.
You cannot name the member of staff involved, and you cannot identify the guest beyond however they signed the review.
No promotional material of any kind, including incentives to visit, loyalty programmes and unrelated links.
A closing line offering money off a second stay is a rejection rather than a recovery.
Responses must be based on first-hand experience of management or staff, with no HTML and no shouting in capitals.
Write it as a person, in ordinary sentences. The formatting rules are enforced rather than advisory.
A response that complies is typically published within forty eight hours.
Do not write one expecting the guest to read it the same evening, and do not resubmit on day one.
Writing a management response that gets published
Three of these five steps are deletions. That is the honest shape of the job on this platform.
Open the Management Center
Responses are written from the owner side of the listing rather than from the public review page.
Strip the evidence out
Whatever the email thread proves, it cannot go in. Describe what you did without quoting anybody.
Take the names out
Refer to the team by role: the duty manager, the night porter. Naming a person breaches the guidelines and is a poor idea regardless.
Answer the factual claim rather than the tone
TripAdvisor's own advice to owners is that the responses worth writing are the ones correcting a factual misstatement or describing an action already taken.
Cut the offer, then submit
Delete any sentence inviting the guest back on better terms, and expect the response to appear in about two days.
A two star stay, and a response the moderator will publish
A twelve room guesthouse. The review is specific, mostly fair, and contains one thing that is simply wrong.
Helen and Rob
Two bubbles out of five. stayed in March.
Room was clean and the breakfast was good. Everything else was hard work. The radiator in room four was stone cold for two nights and we were told the boiler was being serviced, which apparently it had been for a fortnight. And the listing says parking is included. It is not. It is eight pounds a night in the car park down the road.
Helen and Rob, thank you for the two nights and for being specific, which is more use to us than a rating on its own. The radiator had a failed valve rather than a boiler fault, and it should not have taken a fortnight for anyone to look at it properly. It was replaced the week after you left, and the duty manager now checks that room directly during a cold snap. On the parking you are right and we were wrong. The listing still said included after the arrangement with the car park had changed, and that page was corrected the day your review arrived. The breakfast is the one thing I will not apologise for.
The sentence doing the work
On the parking you are right and we were wrong
One of the two complaints is a checkable error the owner can settle outright, and TripAdvisor's guidance is that correcting a factual misstatement is exactly the kind of response worth writing. Conceding the smaller point in seven words buys the longer explanation about the radiator a hearing it would not otherwise get. Note what is absent: no quoted email, no named housekeeper, no discounted return, all three of which would have failed moderation.
Where GetSetReply stops on TripAdvisor
GetSetReply drafts the management response and leaves the posting to you. That is not a limitation we would remove if we could: a moderated reply is one you want to read twice before it goes.
- Drafts arrive without the three things that fail moderation most often, which are quoted correspondence, staff names and an offer.
- You paste the response into the Management Center and submit it yourself.
- Nothing is published on your behalf, on TripAdvisor or on any other platform.
The two pages next to this one
One explains how the TripAdvisor connection works. The other is wording for the complaint that costs a property the most.
TripAdvisor is one of the places we watch
Every platform below lands in the same queue, so a TripAdvisor review and a review from anywhere else are read, drafted and answered in one place.
- Yelp
- TripAdvisor
- DoorDash
- Trustpilot
- Etsy
- Square
Management response questions, answered from the guidelines
Each answer comes from TripAdvisor's published posting guidelines or its owner FAQ, both cited below.
Can I quote the guest's emails in a TripAdvisor response?
No. The posting guidelines prohibit quoted material published elsewhere, including correspondence from a guest or any other third party, so a pasted email thread will not be published.
Can I name the member of staff involved?
No. Personal information about any person, including names, is prohibited in a management response. Refer to the role instead.
How long does a management response take to appear?
TripAdvisor says a response that complies with the guidelines is typically published within forty eight hours, and that you are notified when it is.
Can I offer a discount on a return visit in the response?
Not in the response itself. Promotional material of any kind, including incentives for guests to visit, is not allowed in a management response.
Does GetSetReply post the management response for me?
No. It writes the draft. You submit it in the Management Center, which is also where a rejection would reach you.
Where the TripAdvisor rules on this page came from
Both pages below are TripAdvisor's own, and both were read on the date shown.
- Tripadvisor Trust and Safety: Management Responses Posting Guidelines Read 2026-09-10.
- Tripadvisor: FAQ for business owners Read 2026-09-10.
Management responses
Write it once, and have it published
Connect the listing and each new review arrives with a response drafted inside the rules it will be moderated against.