nformation about the quality of the accommodation services provided by hotels in different cities across the globe can now be conveniently obtained by accessing travelers ’ reviews posted on various travel websites such as TripAdvisor, Orbitz, and Expedia. Thesereviews,especiallynegativeones,canhaveseriousimpacto nthehotelsconcernedwhosereputat ionandbusinessareatstake. Hotel management thus needs to address negative comments with an effec tive response, termed review response genre in this study, to achieve service recovery. Drawing upon the construct of rapport as the analytical framework, this paper focuses particularly on the ways the review response genre serves this communicative purpos e while responding to unjust negative comments. It is found that hotel management deals with such comments with denials of the problems mentioned in the comments and attempts to enhance rapport with the dissatisfied customers. The findings should be of pra ctical significance to hotels and the practitioners responsible for writing review responses.