Hospitality case study · 17 locations
Reputation management at 17 locations, and getting new venues found everywhere
Restaurants and nightlife venues do not just need Google. They need Apple Maps, Yelp, and increasingly Uber and Lyft, where a rider picks a destination from a list.
What changed when we took over
Forward Hospitality Group runs restaurants and nightlife venues. Across the 17 open locations we manage, Google holds 9,660 reviews. Before we took over, most of them went unanswered.
| Year | Reviews | Reply rate | Median response | Avg rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 1,429 | 17% | 12.3 h | 4.66 |
| 2024 | 2,374 | 39% | 531 h | 4.71 |
| 2025 | 2,688 | 98% | 18.3 h | 4.70 |
| 2026 | 3,054 | 97% | 15.0 h | 4.79 |
Reply rate went from 39% to 98%. Median response time is now 15 hours, with 82% of reviews answered inside a day and 91% inside two. Average rating across the group has risen from 4.71 to 4.79 over the same period.
Why we answer one-star reviews more slowly, on purpose
Across 2025 and 2026, five-star reviews get a reply in a median of 16.4 hours. One-star reviews take 19.5 hours, and a meaningful minority take far longer.
| Rating | Replies | Median | Within 24 h | Within 48 h |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5★ | 5,135 | 16.4 h | 76% | 91% |
| 4★ | 142 | 13.3 h | 75% | 89% |
| 3★ | 82 | 19.1 h | 60% | 83% |
| 2★ | 42 | 21.0 h | 60% | 76% |
| 1★ | 211 | 19.5 h | 55% | 77% |
That gap is deliberate. We do not answer a complaint until the operator has told us what actually happened. A public reply that guesses at the facts is worse than no reply, because it is permanent and the customer knows the truth.
The clearest evidence is in the wordless ones. A one-star review with no written text takes a median of 27.9 hours against 19.1 for a one-star that explains itself, because when a guest leaves a bare one-star there is nothing to go on at all until someone at the venue tells us who came in and what went wrong.
Most agencies would post an instant apology to every negative review. That is faster and worse.
Figures are from the Google Business Profile API across the 17 open Forward Hospitality locations under management, 3 September 2026. 2026 is a part year.
Getting new venues found everywhere
Opening a venue means more than a Google listing. We handle Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, and the Uber and Lyft destination listings, the last of which almost nobody does, and which matters more than it sounds when a rider is picking somewhere to go on a Friday night.
“Just a quick mid-year review. Your reputation management has been second to none. Your response time to any updates needed couldn’t be faster. We’re getting our system down for new openings. You’ve become an integral part of the family, so thank you for all that you do for FHG.”
Zosimo Maximo, CMO, Forward Hospitality Group. July 2026
TODO: the new-openings checklist
You said you would draft this in parallel. Once I have it, it becomes both this section and the Uber/Lyft guide.