You "Get" for Reviews Again

[GeorgiaGirl]

Well I just got home and found 2 seperate emails from the "Membership Consultant" of bedandbreakfast.com asking me to send proof of 2 different stays. Says it has to be a copy of my receipt with the dates shown. I don't mind doing it, but it will take time for me to find 1, scan it and email it to her. The other stay I do not have a receipt, Innkeeper did not give me one and wasn't there during our checkout. So now, does that mean that my review I submitted for the Inn where I don't have a receipt not get posted?? What a pain in the bu..!.

Have I mentioned that I really enjoy having your perspective here on this forum? Thank you for taking the time to post here and share your point of view as an inngoer. And for putting up with reading between our whinefests
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Aw shucks, thanks

It's also given me as a Inngoer a new prospective too! I enjoy coming in and reading everything, even your "whinefests"

 

[swirt]

The problem using an extra yahoo or whatever email address is that they must at least check it for the verification emails that TA and the others do. If all they do is give it out and then once in a while go out and just delete, there reviews will never get posted.
I was reading a forum on TA regarding reviews never being posted. There seem to be a good many that do not, for one reason or another. TA's replies state that they are behind on posting to the site. They check for verification of email and they review the review for 'fraud' - one employee even stated if the review was too good they would consider it fraud, there were several other reasons given.
TA is getting out of control. They are now 'recommending' hotels & B&B's. See my other post on this..

The problem using an extra yahoo or whatever email address is that they must at least check it for the verification emails that TA and the others do. If all they do is give it out and then once in a while go out and just delete, there reviews will never get posted.
I was reading a forum on TA regarding reviews never being posted. There seem to be a good many that do not, for one reason or another. TA's replies state that they are behind on posting to the site. They check for verification of email and they review the review for 'fraud' - one employee even stated if the review was too good they would consider it fraud, there were several other reasons given.
TA is getting out of control. They are now 'recommending' hotels & B&B's. See my other post on this.

If you post a review then obv you have to go to that email acct to verify.
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well, to me, the review cards look like the inserts in magazines that i throw away.
many of my guests are not taking them, they are leaving them behind or just dropping them in the trash.
.

Hmm...
I wonder if there would be a better format to put them in? We did them on postcards so we could afford to pay for production and postage... they were already expensive, but going larger puts them in a different class on postage both outbound and inbound, and they are borderline unaffordable.
One idea we had was to create a nice looking full-color 8-11 PDF for innkeepers. We could even create one for every inn - with the name of the inn already on it, etc. Innkeepers could print them whenever they wanted, hand them out to guests and collect them - then just mail them back to us after you get 5-10 or so, keeping costs to a minimum. That way we solve the problem of them looking like magazine inserts, we give more room to write on them as well.
With regard to collecting email addresses - I would love to drop that requirement. I am in the same camp - hate giving mine out. We do it for obvious fraud reasons, but there could be a way that we could drop it... We could make it "optional" for a guest to enter it... but if they didn't enter it, we would reserve the right to request a receipt for proof of stay from either the guest OR the innkeeper... so we could validate them that way.
Thoughts on these?
.

With regard to collecting email addresses - I would love to drop that requirement. I am in the same camp - hate giving mine out. We do it for obvious fraud reasons, but there could be a way that we could drop it... We could make it "optional" for a guest to enter it... but if they didn't enter it, we would reserve the right to request a receipt for proof of stay from either the guest OR the innkeeper... so we could validate them that way.
Thoughts on these?

Verifying STAY is a good idea anyway. I know you would do that if it were a negative review. Not per the guest, but per the innkeeper, but then you know that wouldn't happen either. I think those who want reviews WOULD DO IT.
.

Ooohh.. I like the idea that swirt had... it would take some doing, but we could make each form with a photo of each inn I believe. I need to check on it, but I think we designed an automated tool for custom GC's that might work this way. I think duplexing would be tough, but I believe the tri-fold method with tape would work. We could even send out a sticker to use instead of tape... So the innkeeper could print it, pre-fold or crease it at least, put the sticker in the right place - give it to guest and guest could drop in the mail - we'd pay for postage. Or the innkeeper could just collect them and send them in.
As far as printing full-color or not, if we were going to do this via pdf, we could make a few versions. One that is B/W, one that is full-page no/fold innkeeper mails in, and one that is tri-fold/stick with tape/consumer sends in.
As far as printing them out on your own, color always looks nicer, and it should cost less than $1 or so/copy. My HP printer says landed print cost of .50/copy, but there are online printers that do copies for under .20/color copy as well as places like kinkos now are pretty cheap. Sure - it will be a small expense, but for $20-50 you would be pretty flush with copies of these, then we could have the B/W to economize.
As far as verifying stay - we reserve the right to do that on any review and have done it for plenty of positive and negative reviews alike. If we didn't require email - then we would just need to take it one step further so we avoid cheaters. Although if someone wants to cheat - there is not much anyone can do about. Unethical people are going to find a way around a system no matter what we do.
.

The biggest problem I would think would be paying all these people to transcribe what was written. I'd hate to see you have to raise your rates just to pay an army of typists.
It seems to me it would be more cost effective (leading to lower membership prices) to make the online entry easier. Here's a few separate ideas.

1. To reduce the need for verification, make it so that the link an innkeeper sends to guests in their thank you email includes a unique identifier for the inn so that the only way the reviewer would have that link would be because the innkeeper sent it to them....means they most likely must have stayed (not 100% guarantee but closer) If they submit a review using that link, they don't have to leave an email address....but log the ip address to help spot fraud.
2. Take your site to the next level of catering to travelers (more like a travel community..you are almost there with the "My reservations") Make it so travelers can create an account. Then they can flag B&B's that the might want to go to while planning the trip. All so they can log back in later and find each of the ones that caught their eye so they can review them with a significant other before making a final decision. If travelers feel like it is a sense of community they are more likely to put in reviews, which would be easier to spot patterns, like identical ip addresses with multiple accounts and single reviews on each account. It would make it easier for inn-goers to spot the travel deals for the areas of their interest ( a perk to creating an account). Unify the forum with the rest of it so it becomes more of a connected B&B goer community. Then people can easily enter reviews by logging in and not feeling like they are attaching an email address to a review (because it is already attached to the account) The other benefit to the account/community is that it would give you a lot more data to mine...not so much for individual travelers but for large scale trends.

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The biggest problem I would think would be paying all these people to transcribe what was written. I'd hate to see you have to raise your rates just to pay an army of typists.
It seems to me it would be more cost effective (leading to lower membership prices) to make the online entry easier. Here's a few separate ideas.

1. To reduce the need for verification, make it so that the link an innkeeper sends to guests in their thank you email includes a unique identifier for the inn so that the only way the reviewer would have that link would be because the innkeeper sent it to them....means they most likely must have stayed (not 100% guarantee but closer) If they submit a review using that link, they don't have to leave an email address....but log the ip address to help spot fraud.
2. Take your site to the next level of catering to travelers (more like a travel community..you are almost there with the "My reservations") Make it so travelers can create an account. Then they can flag B&B's that the might want to go to while planning the trip. All so they can log back in later and find each of the ones that caught their eye so they can review them with a significant other before making a final decision. If travelers feel like it is a sense of community they are more likely to put in reviews, which would be easier to spot patterns, like identical ip addresses with multiple accounts and single reviews on each account. It would make it easier for inn-goers to spot the travel deals for the areas of their interest ( a perk to creating an account). Unify the forum with the rest of it so it becomes more of a connected B&B goer community. Then people can easily enter reviews by logging in and not feeling like they are attaching an email address to a review (because it is already attached to the account) The other benefit to the account/community is that it would give you a lot more data to mine...not so much for individual travelers but for large scale trends.

Those are well-thought out ideas. I would email the link to my guests (as long as this is not something where I have to access my account, fire up an email, add email addresses, etc) to do the reviews if it saved them from having to enter their own email address. If I had the code in my own thank you email, then I'd be good to go. Remove it if they are repeats who have already reviewed or repeats I don't want to bother with the request.
And, you address bandb's concerns with how to make this a more centralized location for guests and innkeepers alike. Innkeepers will be more ready to list if they see there is a real community growing up around the site. Maybe rates would go down because more users would be on there, leading to more inns signing up. And if the ads are still there, maybe they could go away because of all the new users.
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Swirt, some VERY good ideas you have there. John are you reading this? Hope so!
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I average one or two good ideas a month, I figure I can coast for a few weeks now

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

The problem using an extra yahoo or whatever email address is that they must at least check it for the verification emails that TA and the others do. If all they do is give it out and then once in a while go out and just delete, there reviews will never get posted.
I was reading a forum on TA regarding reviews never being posted. There seem to be a good many that do not, for one reason or another. TA's replies state that they are behind on posting to the site. They check for verification of email and they review the review for 'fraud' - one employee even stated if the review was too good they would consider it fraud, there were several other reasons given.
TA is getting out of control. They are now 'recommending' hotels & B&B's. See my other post on this..

The problem using an extra yahoo or whatever email address is that they must at least check it for the verification emails that TA and the others do. If all they do is give it out and then once in a while go out and just delete, there reviews will never get posted.
I was reading a forum on TA regarding reviews never being posted. There seem to be a good many that do not, for one reason or another. TA's replies state that they are behind on posting to the site. They check for verification of email and they review the review for 'fraud' - one employee even stated if the review was too good they would consider it fraud, there were several other reasons given.
TA is getting out of control. They are now 'recommending' hotels & B&B's. See my other post on this.

If you post a review then obv you have to go to that email acct to verify.
.

well, to me, the review cards look like the inserts in magazines that i throw away.
many of my guests are not taking them, they are leaving them behind or just dropping them in the trash.
.

Hmm...
I wonder if there would be a better format to put them in? We did them on postcards so we could afford to pay for production and postage... they were already expensive, but going larger puts them in a different class on postage both outbound and inbound, and they are borderline unaffordable.
One idea we had was to create a nice looking full-color 8-11 PDF for innkeepers. We could even create one for every inn - with the name of the inn already on it, etc. Innkeepers could print them whenever they wanted, hand them out to guests and collect them - then just mail them back to us after you get 5-10 or so, keeping costs to a minimum. That way we solve the problem of them looking like magazine inserts, we give more room to write on them as well.
With regard to collecting email addresses - I would love to drop that requirement. I am in the same camp - hate giving mine out. We do it for obvious fraud reasons, but there could be a way that we could drop it... We could make it "optional" for a guest to enter it... but if they didn't enter it, we would reserve the right to request a receipt for proof of stay from either the guest OR the innkeeper... so we could validate them that way.
Thoughts on these?
.

With regard to collecting email addresses - I would love to drop that requirement. I am in the same camp - hate giving mine out. We do it for obvious fraud reasons, but there could be a way that we could drop it... We could make it "optional" for a guest to enter it... but if they didn't enter it, we would reserve the right to request a receipt for proof of stay from either the guest OR the innkeeper... so we could validate them that way.
Thoughts on these?

Verifying STAY is a good idea anyway. I know you would do that if it were a negative review. Not per the guest, but per the innkeeper, but then you know that wouldn't happen either. I think those who want reviews WOULD DO IT.
.

Ooohh.. I like the idea that swirt had... it would take some doing, but we could make each form with a photo of each inn I believe. I need to check on it, but I think we designed an automated tool for custom GC's that might work this way. I think duplexing would be tough, but I believe the tri-fold method with tape would work. We could even send out a sticker to use instead of tape... So the innkeeper could print it, pre-fold or crease it at least, put the sticker in the right place - give it to guest and guest could drop in the mail - we'd pay for postage. Or the innkeeper could just collect them and send them in.
As far as printing full-color or not, if we were going to do this via pdf, we could make a few versions. One that is B/W, one that is full-page no/fold innkeeper mails in, and one that is tri-fold/stick with tape/consumer sends in.
As far as printing them out on your own, color always looks nicer, and it should cost less than $1 or so/copy. My HP printer says landed print cost of .50/copy, but there are online printers that do copies for under .20/color copy as well as places like kinkos now are pretty cheap. Sure - it will be a small expense, but for $20-50 you would be pretty flush with copies of these, then we could have the B/W to economize.
As far as verifying stay - we reserve the right to do that on any review and have done it for plenty of positive and negative reviews alike. If we didn't require email - then we would just need to take it one step further so we avoid cheaters. Although if someone wants to cheat - there is not much anyone can do about. Unethical people are going to find a way around a system no matter what we do.
.

The biggest problem I would think would be paying all these people to transcribe what was written. I'd hate to see you have to raise your rates just to pay an army of typists.
It seems to me it would be more cost effective (leading to lower membership prices) to make the online entry easier. Here's a few separate ideas.

1. To reduce the need for verification, make it so that the link an innkeeper sends to guests in their thank you email includes a unique identifier for the inn so that the only way the reviewer would have that link would be because the innkeeper sent it to them....means they most likely must have stayed (not 100% guarantee but closer) If they submit a review using that link, they don't have to leave an email address....but log the ip address to help spot fraud.
2. Take your site to the next level of catering to travelers (more like a travel community..you are almost there with the "My reservations") Make it so travelers can create an account. Then they can flag B&B's that the might want to go to while planning the trip. All so they can log back in later and find each of the ones that caught their eye so they can review them with a significant other before making a final decision. If travelers feel like it is a sense of community they are more likely to put in reviews, which would be easier to spot patterns, like identical ip addresses with multiple accounts and single reviews on each account. It would make it easier for inn-goers to spot the travel deals for the areas of their interest ( a perk to creating an account). Unify the forum with the rest of it so it becomes more of a connected B&B goer community. Then people can easily enter reviews by logging in and not feeling like they are attaching an email address to a review (because it is already attached to the account) The other benefit to the account/community is that it would give you a lot more data to mine...not so much for individual travelers but for large scale trends.

.

The biggest problem I would think would be paying all these people to transcribe what was written. I'd hate to see you have to raise your rates just to pay an army of typists.
It seems to me it would be more cost effective (leading to lower membership prices) to make the online entry easier. Here's a few separate ideas.

1. To reduce the need for verification, make it so that the link an innkeeper sends to guests in their thank you email includes a unique identifier for the inn so that the only way the reviewer would have that link would be because the innkeeper sent it to them....means they most likely must have stayed (not 100% guarantee but closer) If they submit a review using that link, they don't have to leave an email address....but log the ip address to help spot fraud.
2. Take your site to the next level of catering to travelers (more like a travel community..you are almost there with the "My reservations") Make it so travelers can create an account. Then they can flag B&B's that the might want to go to while planning the trip. All so they can log back in later and find each of the ones that caught their eye so they can review them with a significant other before making a final decision. If travelers feel like it is a sense of community they are more likely to put in reviews, which would be easier to spot patterns, like identical ip addresses with multiple accounts and single reviews on each account. It would make it easier for inn-goers to spot the travel deals for the areas of their interest ( a perk to creating an account). Unify the forum with the rest of it so it becomes more of a connected B&B goer community. Then people can easily enter reviews by logging in and not feeling like they are attaching an email address to a review (because it is already attached to the account) The other benefit to the account/community is that it would give you a lot more data to mine...not so much for individual travelers but for large scale trends.

Those are well-thought out ideas. I would email the link to my guests (as long as this is not something where I have to access my account, fire up an email, add email addresses, etc) to do the reviews if it saved them from having to enter their own email address. If I had the code in my own thank you email, then I'd be good to go. Remove it if they are repeats who have already reviewed or repeats I don't want to bother with the request.
And, you address bandb's concerns with how to make this a more centralized location for guests and innkeepers alike. Innkeepers will be more ready to list if they see there is a real community growing up around the site. Maybe rates would go down because more users would be on there, leading to more inns signing up. And if the ads are still there, maybe they could go away because of all the new users.
.

Swirt, some VERY good ideas you have there. John are you reading this? Hope so!
.

I average one or two good ideas a month, I figure I can coast for a few weeks now

.

I average one or two good ideas a month, I figure I can coast for a few weeks now

What is the saying, resting on your laurels? I can't remember, but something like that.

 

[Samster]

Well I just got home and found 2 seperate emails from the "Membership Consultant" of bedandbreakfast.com asking me to send proof of 2 different stays. Says it has to be a copy of my receipt with the dates shown. I don't mind doing it, but it will take time for me to find 1, scan it and email it to her. The other stay I do not have a receipt, Innkeeper did not give me one and wasn't there during our checkout. So now, does that mean that my review I submitted for the Inn where I don't have a receipt not get posted?? What a pain in the bu..!.

Well I just got home and found 2 seperate emails from the "Membership Consultant" of bedandbreakfast.com asking me to send proof of 2 different stays. Says it has to be a copy of my receipt with the dates shown. I don't mind doing it, but it will take time for me to find 1, scan it and email it to her. The other stay I do not have a receipt, Innkeeper did not give me one and wasn't there during our checkout. So now, does that mean that my review I submitted for the Inn where I don't have a receipt not get posted?? What a pain in the bu..!

If you don't mind my asking, were they negative reviews? I have not had anyone mention being asked for proof yet, unless the inn owner has a problem with the review. Just curious.
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Remember the shoeless, braless innkeeper of the B&B with the coffee carafe stuck to the machine, cobwebs, and one dried up apple for snacks for 6 rooms?? The review I wrote was not negative but accurate and I was asked for a receipt, which I hadn't kept. I didn't put anything about how our room wasn't freshened and the tiny portion of ground coffee that was supposed to last for 3 days either. I also left out the part about the innkeeper!

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks for everyone's comments here - these are some great ideas and we are going to try and implement a set of them. I'll keep you guys posted as we try and get through some of the development. I think overall the idea is to have an online suite of review products and functionality for innkeepers based on the products presented here from all of you.