With all the discussion about social media, blogging, travel
review sites, etc., there's always a fair amount of passion.
Most innkeepers either love or hate
Tripadvisor.
There's very little middle ground. Our feeling at
The B&B Team is that
innkeepers need to know about, track, and use Travel 2.0
venues as much as they can and as much as they feel it may
impact their business positively. However, there's a big
difference between "use" and "abuse."
For instance, is
there anything wrong with an innkeeper encouraging happy,
smiling departing guests from leaving a review at
Tripadvisor (or some other site)? Is it any less ethical not
to say a thing about reviews to a departing i.guest who had
a less than perfect stay? Is it important and proper to
respond adequately to a negative review? How about posing as
a happy i.guest and posting a great review about your own
property? After all, it's just to get the ball rolling,
right? Or what about pretending to be an irate former guest
and posting a bogus review blasting your competitor?
In the early days of the public Internet, some
enterprising individuals bought hundreds of URL's, including
the names of industries and companies, in the belief (well
founded in many cases) that someone would pay them a lot of
money to buy them. It worked, for a while. There was nothing
inherently wrong with being ahead of the competition and
buying URLs like "bedandbreakfast.com"
that were industry specific. But there was a problem with
people buying the names of companies and extorting those
companies, in essence, to get their own name back. In the
end, because of the ethics and the law that prevailed, some
entrepreneurs were denied their hoped-for windfall. A line
had been crossed.
In social media, and innkeeping, everyone needs to keep a
perspective and remember that there are lines that shouldn't
be crossed. This is new territory, so keep a level head and
keep the standards high. When a review is not a review,
maybe the angel on your shoulder should be louder than the
other voice!
Peter
