Samster
Well-known member
Yowsa! You are one confident innkeeper about your business and giving as much as you can."they keep seeing reviews about my place"I think review sites help people be more adventurous. There are folks coming thru my door who have never set foot inside a B&B before. Why are they coming? They were looking for places to stay and they kept finding my inn reviewed by previous guests. I do not have the best reviews on the planet. Quite a few other B&B's have many more and much better reviews.effects usI applaud Todd for being caring. Nothing wrong with checking reviews, in fact it is silly if you don't keep abreast of them, like everything else in this tourism/hospitality industry that effects us. It is all a part of our life and our livelihood.
I asked on another thread about using TA reviews with a link back to them (legally) and got an eyeful about how pathetic to even consider using them in marketing, by one in particular. I was actually asking about it for our state parks system as I am a blogger there and we encourage social media interaction, with over 20,000+ followers. I wanted to use an example of a review I would trust vs a review I would not trust for those who follow the blog and Facebook. I use TA when I plan a trip, and obviously millions of other do!
You know me by now, I despise facebook, with a passion, but it is what it is. To put it simply. So while I don't embrace it, others do, so I have to go in from time to time. I can't throw the baby out with the bathwater..
It only effects us if we let it . Educate people about ta. and see how they feel about how ta handles the wrongs .YOU will be surprised. I had a guest that was upset because ta would not post their wedding pictures at the resort they were staying at. Pictures of the resort and the sea by the resort.
People are people there are leaders then there are followers .Some have to have other tell them what to see and how to see it. Others can make up their own minds. And do so. there are people that enjoy talking behind peoples backs.
We all try our best most of the time. We fail at times too. SO be it. Life goes on. after all it is not the end of the world. TA is just another form for now adays . The telphone used to be thee place for gossip. Now it is TA. There are so many places to have your people post reviews other then ta.
It is not the be all and end all! We use CAA to help us plan a trip also visitors centres.
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But, they keep seeing reviews about my place. So, they veer off the standard 'let's go to a hotel where we know what we'll get' and they take what is not really even a chance. Because they had the opinions of other people letting them know this was a 'safe' place to stay. There is a big market out there looking for safe.
Sure, TA is not the only game in town, but it is the biggest. In a way like bb.com is to the directories. No one likes them, but a lot of people choose to not ignore them.
If you have no reviews on TA you will never hear from guests who didn't book because they didn't read your reviews there. It doesn't mean some guests didn't go looking for reviews on the biggest review site on the planet and, failing to find you, moved on to somewhere else.
That does not make those guests sheep. It means they have limited funds and time and want to get the biggest bang for their buck.
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Again, it is a proven fact that people read reviews. Not really sure what the argument is about, check your reviews, stay on top of your business, anything that impacts your business.
Otherwise leave the online forums and dig a hole and stuff your head in it. We live in a tech world, this is part of our business, this is our livelihood, it is our job to be good at it, to know as much as we can that will help us in what we do, to be the best. Unless you don't care about being good at it, or being the best at what you do.
There is another online forum and they are only now sharing the "6 newly ordained priests coming to your inn for 2 weeks" scam, where they are being scammed! They are there to warn people "what happened to us we don't want to happen to you..." I mean think about it, we have been sharing this info for 5 to 10 years now.
.Sorry, I just disagree. I AM THE BEST AT WHAT I DO. I don't need a review to tell me I am. Nothing anyone writes, says, etc. is going to change what I do. I live it every second of every day. I know what works for my home and business and what doesn't. I am 100% honest and fair. I always give as much as I can.Joey Bloggs said:Otherwise leave the online forums and dig a hole and stuff your head in it. We live in a tech world, this is part of our business, this is our livelihood, it is our job to be good at it, to know as much as we can that will help us in what we do, to be the best. Unless you don't care about being good at it, or being the best at what you do.
Thank you, I am now leaving this forum and going back to my hole in the sand...it is lovely, warm and comfortable there. Best of luck to all those looking for validation outside of themselves, you will never find it and to me that is so incredibly sad.
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Online reviews on a variety of sites is a fact of life. People read them, use them, post them, and take away what they will from them. There's really no way to ignore the fact that reviews can affect any business, good or bad. And, the Internet lives for a long time. Social media is now a fact of life, whether you want to embrace it personally or not.
We still have people calling us from reviews on the Internet and we've been closed for almost a year and a half and our listings on the review sites are down. I think that speaks volumes.
I'm not saying that it's good to obsess about reviews at all, or to use them as validataion for what innkeepers do, but they can be a mechanism for improvement or seeing things in a different light. And using positive reviews to promote a product can be a good thing.