AI Review Reply Assistant

What is MARA?

MARA is an AI-powered platform for responding to reviews and managing hotel reputations, developed by the German company Mara Solutions GmbH. It aggregates reviews from various review sources into a single inbox and generates personalized responses based on the brand’s tone, property details, and standard guidelines.

The product initially focused on the AI Review Reply Assistant, but it has since been expanded to include functions such as review analysis, questionnaires, review components, AI-generated reports, PMS synchronization, and open APIs. The official services are intended for businesses and self-employed individuals only; it is not a product meant for ordinary consumers.

A one-sentence summary

MARA helps hotels and local businesses to gather, analyze, and respond to online reviews in a centralized manner; it can also automatically send simple replies according to predefined rules and identify operational issues from the feedback received.

Core functions

• AI-generated replies: Personalized multilingual responses are created based on each comment.
• Review Inbox: Centralized management of reviews from various platforms and properties.
• Direct posting: After connecting to the channel, replies can be sent from MARA.
• Brand Voice: Learn the tone and wording used in the company’s existing responses.
• Smart Snippets: Configure factual handling rules for common complaints and compliments.
• Automated responses: Generated or sent based on scoring, text, and process criteria.
• Review Analytics: Analyze topics, trends, strengths and weaknesses, and impact scores.
• Ask Reviews Anything: Query review data using natural language.
• Surveys: Collect feedback before, during, or after staying.
• Review Widgets: Display reliable review scores on corporate websites.
• AI Research Assistant: Generates analysis reports on a regular basis and sends them by email.
• Open API: Provides property, review, and component data to BI and hotel tools.

AI Comment Reply Generator

• Understand the specific topics in positive, negative, and mixed evaluations.
• Generate a response in the corresponding language based on the original language of the comment.
• Avoid using exactly the same template structure for every comment.
• Actual interactive scenarios can be added, such as delayed check-out or on-site handling.
• Copying and pasting is supported, and content can also be posted directly through connection channels.
• After generation, manual modification, approval, or rejection is still allowed.

Review Inbox – Comments inbox

• View new reviews from various review platforms in one place.
• Filter by property, rating, channel, and processing status.
• Assign tasks of viewing and responding to team members.
• Receive daily notifications for new comments.
• View the AI draft, revision history, and sending status.
• Automate the processing of simple comments, while keeping manual approval for complex ones.
• It supports multi-user and multi-property management.

Supported comment channels

Brand Voice – the tone of the brand

Brand Voice learns the tone from existing customer comments, thereby ensuring that the generated content reflects the actual voice of the brand. It is suitable for standardizing the language style across multiple properties, but it cannot automatically take into account service policies that have not yet been provided.

• Learn formal, friendly, concise, or upscale tones of speech.
• Maintain common terms of address, endings, and brand terminology.
• Reduce differences in the response styles among different employees.
• It can be adjusted continuously through manual responses.
• Rules prohibiting commitments, handling sensitive events, and managing escalations still need to be established.

Smart Snippets – Intelligent code snippets

• Provide facts on common topics such as parking fees, breakfast options, and check-in times.
• When a relevant topic appears in the comments, the appropriate reference information is automatically included.
• Prevent employees from having to search repeatedly for the same policies.
• The same fact can be naturally expressed in different wording.
• The segments must be updated promptly after a policy change.
• Compensation and improvement plans that have not yet been implemented cannot be presented as facts.

Auto-reply rules

MARA allows companies to automatically process certain simple reviews, such as four- or five-star ratings that contain no text; in such cases, a draft can be generated in advance awaiting manual review. For reviews related to complaints, security issues, discrimination, refunds, and legal disputes, automatic publication without review should not be enabled.

• Automated generation or sending is determined based on the score.
• Distinguish between commented and uncomented posts.
• Simple positive comments can be handled with low-risk automated replies.
• Complex comments only generate drafts and notify the responsible person.
• Retain the permissions for manual approval, modification, and disabling automation.
• Regularly conduct random checks on the accuracy of automated responses and brand consistency.

Review Analytics – Comment Analysis

• Automated organization of topics such as cleaning, front desk, breakfast, and facilities.
• Compare the performance of different properties, time periods, and categories.
• The Impact Score shows which topics are seeing their scores increase or decrease.
• The AI summary provides health checks, impact analysis, and recommended actions.
• Track the changes over time in complaints and commendations.
• Key points are communicated to the management team through weekly and monthly reports.
• Comparing competitors helps determine the regional reputation status.

Ask Reviews Anything

• Ask guests to share their opinions on the breakfast, the beds, or self-check-in.
• Find the most common complaints for a certain period.
• Compare the differences among multiple properties on the same topic.
• Extract actionable operational issues from the comments.
• The answer depends on the quality of the connected comments and categories.
• Important conclusions should be verified by returning to the original comment sample.

Questionnaires and feedback from residents

• Create a questionnaire during the stay to identify issues that can be addressed promptly.
• Set up immediate notifications for negative feedback.
• Add up to 10 additional questions to the questionnaire.
• Send configurations for all guests or a specific customer group.
• Assist in drafting public comments to satisfy customers.
• Questionnaire design should avoid leading evaluations and the selective suppression of negative feedback.

Review Widgets – Commenting component

• Display reviews and the platform’s logo on the hotel’s or company’s official website.
• Use third-party ratings to enhance trust on the direct booking page.
• Choose reputable review platforms as the source for display.
• Component data can be used in other systems through open APIs.
• The display rules should be accurate; important negative information that could lead to misinterpretation must not be concealed.

AI Research Assistant

The AI Research Assistant can generate review and survey analysis reports based on natural language instructions, and it can run these reports on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, at a specified date, or as needed. The reports are sent in formatted PDF format to internal or external recipients, who do not need to have a MARA account.

• Generate reports on breakfast and service topics for restaurant managers.
• Generate a list of issues that need to be fixed first for the general manager.
• Send complaints about newly emerging facilities to maintain the team.
• To enable the group’s management to compare the performance of different properties.
• Add charts, excerpts from comments, and action recommendations as needed.
• External email recipients must be authorized and the principle of data minimization must be followed.

Create the first tutorial on AI responses

1. Register for a free trial account and create property details.
2. Paste a comment from which unnecessary personal information has been removed.
3. Confirm the language of the comment, the rating, and the main praises or complaints.
4. Click to generate a reply and view the AI draft.
5. Add the actual background of the processing and the actionable next steps.
6. Remove vague apologies, repetitive statements, and unauthorized compensation.
7. Nuclear symmetry naming, brand tone, contact information, and facts.
8. Copy to the platform or send it after integration is complete.

Tutorial on connecting to comment channels

1. Log in as an administrator with permissions to manage the review platform.
2. Add accurate property or business information in MARA.
3. Choose to connect using Google, Booking, Tripadvisor, or Expedia.
4. Read the permission scope and complete the authorization using the official account.
5. Verify that the status of historical reviews, new reviews, and replies can be synchronized.
6. Set team members, notification, and approval permissions.
7. First, manually release a batch of responses to verify the channel and format.
8. After stabilization, configure automated rules for low-risk comments.

Tutorial on configuring auto-replies

1. List the types of comments that can be safely processed automatically.
2. Start the pilot with high-star ratings that contain no text.
3. Set the Brand Voice, common greetings, and Smart Snippets.
4. Exclude keywords related to complaints, refunds, security, and legal sensitivity.
5. Set complex comments to generate only drafts.
6. Have the person in charge randomly check the automatic reply responses and the results of postings through various channels.
7. Record the error types and tighten the rules.
8. Re-evaluate automation after each policy or team change.

Which users are it suitable for

• Independent hotels, apartment hotels, and resorts.
• A hotel group that owns multiple properties.
• Brands and marketing teams that need to standardize the tone of their comments.
• Local businesses that deal with a large number of Google reviews on a daily basis.
• Management teams that hope to identify operational issues through guest feedback.
• Companies that need to integrate comment data into BI or PMS systems.
• A lodging service that aims to resolve issues on the spot through questionnaires.

Typical use cases

• New comments from multiple platforms are processed in a centralized manner every day.
• Generate responses in the same language for foreign language comments.
• Standardize the names, tone, and service policies of multiple hotels.
• Automatically reply with high-star reviews that contain no text.
• Analyze the impact of topics such as cleanliness, breakfast, and the front desk on the ratings.
• Regularly send special feedback reports to the department head.
• Sync guest preferences to the hotel management system.
• Display third-party review scores on the official website.

Scenarios that are not suitable for fully automatic replies

• Complaints related to personal safety, crime, harassment, or discrimination.
• Disputes related to refunds, compensation, credit cards, and legal responsibilities.
• Comments containing health, identity, and other sensitive personal information.
• Media crises, mass incidents, and widely spread negative reviews.
• Complaints that require an investigation into employee behavior or an examination of evidence on site.
• Contents that require companies to make formal commitments or acknowledge responsibility.

Free trial

MARA allows companies to test the AI comment response generator for free, without the need for a credit card. The official website does not promise a permanently free subscription, a fixed number of trial days, or access to all features; therefore, such offerings should be labeled as free trials combined with paid subscriptions.

Current plan and price

As verified in real time on the website’s dynamic pricing section, when choosing an annual payment plan for one property, Inbox & Analytics shows a cost of 130 euros per month, with settlement on an annual basis. The package includes 500 replies per month; any additional replies cost 0.30 euros each.

Comparison of package features

Price considerations

• The annual price is displayed on a monthly basis, but the contract is settled on an annual basis.
• The reply quota is calculated on a monthly basis, even when an annual contract is signed.
• The total price for multiple properties is dynamically adjusted by the price calculator.
• The old search cache may contain low-priced packages that are no longer available.
• Taxes, currency, and terms of the corporate contract should be confirmed at the time of settlement.
• Whether there are additional charges for API, PMS, implementation, and support for large corporations requires a quote.
• Before making a purchase, it should be confirmed that automatic replies are also included in the reply quota.

How to evaluate costs

• Calculate the average number of reviews per property over the past 12 months.
• Estimate the peak value by combining Google data, OTA information, and survey feedback.
• Calculate the additional cost for replies when there are over 500 items.
• Include the number of properties, the size of the team, and integration implementation in the total cost.
• Compare the time required for manual responses with the time saved through automation.
• Do not overlook the value of analysis and surveys just because of the number of responses.
• First, use the free trial to verify the quality of tone and channel synchronization.

Chrome extensions

• Use MARA on comment websites that do not have direct integration.
• Select the comment text and use a shortcut key to generate a reply.
• Use the response settings and brand tone corresponding to the property in question.
• Copy the generated result and paste it back into the original platform.
• Expansions are provided to existing customers at no additional cost.
• Before installation, check the scope of permissions for reading website content.

MEWS and hotel systems

After the integration of MARA and MEWS, guest preferences extracted from reviews and surveys can be synchronized into the guest profiles, with relevant reminders displayed during check-in. Before synchronizing these preferences, it is necessary to ensure that the information is accurate, directly related to the services offered, and complies with privacy regulations as well as the hotel’s internal access policies.

Open API

MARA has made its API available; the initial endpoints provide data on properties, reviews, and review components, and they enable integration with BI platforms and hotel management tools. API keys must be requested through official channels, as no public information is available regarding pricing, rate limits, or complete documentation of the endpoints.

• Read the property information within the corporate account.
• Access comment data within the authorized scope.
• Retrieve data related to the comment component.
• Feed the reputation data into BI reports.
• Enterprises should implement mechanisms for authentication, pagination, rate limiting, and data deletion.
• API data must not be made available to individuals who have no business need for it.

Privacy and data protection

MARA Solutions GmbH is located in Mannheim, Germany. Its privacy policy is based on the GDPR and outlines the rights of data subjects regarding access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, objection, and complaint. The policy stipulates that data should be deleted or blocked once the purpose for its storage no longer exists and there is no legal obligation to retain it.

• Comments may include names, travel experiences, room details, and service experiences.
• Do not repeat unnecessary personal or booking information in the reply.
• Internal analysis reports are sent only to those who have a business need for them.
• The scope of authorization should be reviewed before connecting the review platform to the PMS.
• Configure the processes for retaining, exporting, and deleting comments.
• When handling requests from data subjects, it should be possible to locate the original comments as well as the derived data.
• The official privacy policy is from an earlier version; when making a purchase, it is necessary to obtain the latest corporate data agreement.

Quality standards for comment replies

• First, accurately repeat the issues actually raised by the customer.
• Positive comments should thank the person for specific feedback rather than using generic phrases.
• For negative reviews, first express understanding, then explain the actions that have been taken to address them.
• Do not engage in public arguments, accusations, or disclose occupancy records.
• Compensation and refunds can only be promised by authorized personnel.
• Formal and secure channels of communication should be provided when offline discussions are necessary.
• Check the name, language, property details, and brand attribution before publishing.

Product advantages

• It is specifically designed around hotel reviews and property feedback.
• Put comments from multiple channels in a single inbox.
• Brand Voice and Smart Snippets enhance personalization and factual consistency.
• It supports multi-language responses, as well as multiple users and multiple properties.
• Automation rules can distinguish between direct sending and manual approval.
• Analyses, questionnaires, and research reports extend the responses to operational improvements.
• Chrome extensions do not cover websites that lack direct integration.
• Open APIs and PMS integration provide additional possibilities for expanding enterprise data flows.

Product restrictions

• The current price of the main package is more suitable for professional accommodation businesses.
• Charging based on the property means that the total cost for multiple properties will increase significantly.
• AI may misinterpret sarcasm, context, and complex complaints.
• Brand Voice cannot replace accurate service policies and on-the-ground facts.
• Auto-responses carry the risk of making false promises and affecting reputation.
• There is no fixed duration or limit specified for the free trial.
• For the API key and the complete technical terms, you need to contact the official authorities.
• The public version of the privacy policy was updated earlier.
• A platform cannot replace crisis communication, legal affairs, and complaint investigations.

GitHub and the open-source status

No official GitHub organization or product source code repository that can be verified in conjunction with the MARA Solutions GmbH website was found. The projects related to mobile application analysis, data pipelines, and security frameworks that were identified under the same name are not related to this hotel review product.

Therefore, MARA should be classified as a commercial SaaS product with closed-source code; an open API indicates the capability for data integration, but it does not mean that the models, applications, or automation engines are open source.

Basic information

Recommendation score

Recommendation score: 4.6 / 5. MARA offers comprehensive features for responding to hotel reviews, maintaining a consistent brand tone, managing messages from various channels, and analyzing feedback; it is suitable for professional hospitality teams. However, its pricing is high per property, and tasks such as automatic responses, privacy management, and handling complex complaints require strict human oversight.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is MARA free?

A free trial without the need for a credit card is available, but the official website does not list any permanently free plans.

How much is MARA?

The current annual main package for 1 property costs 130 euros per month, and it includes 500 replies per month.

How is the fee calculated when the reply quota is exceeded?

After 500 messages per month, each additional reply costs 0.30 euros.

Which review platforms are supported?

It primarily supports Google, Booking, Tripadvisor, and Expedia; for other websites, you can try a Chrome extension.

Can replies be sent automatically?

Automation can be configured, but complex complaints should only generate drafts to be approved manually.

Can one learn the appropriate tone for use in hotels?

Yes, Brand Voice will learn the brand’s tone based on existing responses.

Is it possible to manage multiple hotels?

Yes, the platform supports comparing multiple properties, as well as team use and centralized analysis.

Does MARA provide APIs?

Open APIs are provided; currently, services related to property data, reviews, and components can be requested.

Is it suitable for ordinary individuals to use?

It’s not suitable; the registration page clearly states that the service is intended for companies and self-employed individuals.

Is MARA open source?

It is not open source, and there is no verifiable official repository for the product’s source code.