Post-visit review requests
What this covers
The email that goes out after a guest has eaten, asking them to leave a review. Requires the
Guest Feedback Emails feature on your plan and the manage-settings
permission (Owner or Manager).
It is off by default, and it needs two things before it will send: the feature on your plan, and a review link for it to point at.
Setting it up
- Go to Property Settings → Notifications
(
/settings/notifications). - Turn on Review request emails.
- Paste your review link into the field.
- Set the delay in hours — from 0 to 168. The default is 2.
- Save.
If the feature is not on your plan, the switch is unavailable and says so (link A feature or menu item is missing).
Finding your Google review link
Most restaurants want reviews on Google. Google provides a short link that opens the review box directly, which is what you want here — not your general listing, where the guest has to hunt for the review button.
- Sign in to your Google Business Profile, at
business.google.com, with the account that manages the restaurant. - Find the option called Ask for reviews or Get more reviews.
- Copy the short link it gives you. It usually looks like
https://g.page/r/…orhttps://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=…. - Paste it into the review link field.
Any valid web address works, so you are not tied to Google — TripAdvisor, Yelp, OpenTable, or your own feedback form on your website are all fine. Some restaurants prefer their own form precisely because it catches an unhappy guest privately.
Test it before you save. Open the link in a private browser window. It should land on a review box, not on a sign-in page or a general listing. A wrong link here is invisible to you and annoying to every guest who clicks it.
Who gets one
A guest receives a review request when all of these are true:
- Their booking was marked completed — the request is scheduled by that status change and nothing else
- They have an email address on the booking
- The switch is on, your plan includes the feature, and a review link is saved
The first point has a practical consequence worth spelling out: if your staff do not mark bookings completed, no review requests go out. Marking completion is also what feeds your revenue and utilisation figures, so it is a habit worth building for several reasons at once (link The reservation lifecycle).
Walk-ins and waitlist guests get one too, as long as their booking was completed and they have an email address. Bookings that end as cancelled or no-show never do.
Choosing the delay
The delay is measured from when the booking was marked completed — which is normally when the guest left, if your staff mark it then.
| Delay | Lands | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| 0–1 hours | Almost immediately | Too eager. The guest may still be at the table if completion was marked early, which reads badly |
| 2–4 hours | Later the same day | The default, and a good choice for lunch — the meal is fresh in mind |
| 12–18 hours | Next morning for a dinner | Arguably the best for dinner service: the guest reads it with their coffee rather than on the way home |
| 24 hours | Same time next day | Safe and unobtrusive. Some enthusiasm has worn off |
| 48+ hours | Two days or more | Usually too late. Detail has faded and the message feels disconnected from the visit |
For a dinner-led restaurant, 14–16 hours is a quietly excellent setting: a table completed at 22:30 gets its request around lunchtime the next day.
Etiquette that keeps this from becoming a nuisance
A review request is the one message a guest did not ask for, so it has to earn its place.
- One per visit, and that is the limit. Tabledoo never chases. If a guest does not review, nothing further is sent — resist the urge to ask again another way.
- Do not ask after a visit that went wrong. If a guest complained, a request for a public review is the worst possible follow-up. Where you know there was a problem, deal with it directly and mark the booking completed knowing the request is coming — or handle that guest before the delay elapses.
- Do not offer anything in exchange. Discounts for reviews breach Google's and TripAdvisor's policies and can get your reviews removed or your listing penalised.
- Frequent regulars will get one every visit. If you have guests in weekly, a longer delay and a moment's thought about whether this suits your room is worthwhile.
Good to know
Changing the link does not fix requests already scheduled. Each request carries the link as it was when the visit was completed. Correct a broken link and any requests already waiting still carry the old one — so check the link on the day you set it up, not later.
There is no SMS version. Review requests are email only, by design: the message needs a clickable link and a little explanation, which is not what a one-line text is for.
You cannot see who was sent one. There is no per-guest send history in the app. If you need to know whether a specific guest was asked, that is a support question (link Reporting a problem).
Reviews arrive on the platform, not in Tabledoo. Nothing comes back into the app — you read and reply to reviews wherever your link points.