"It's not enough to ask guests for a write-up on a popular site such as TripAdvisor or Yelp after they've checked out. Lately, some innkeepers have been pressuring their customers to say positive things online — in extreme cases, even before they've checked in.That was the lead consumer advocate Christopher Elliott used in his syndicated "Travel Troubleshooter" column that appeared in today's Denver Post travel section. "called "Some hotels cross the line for a good review" was the title of the column about some properties' practice of "reputation management" of consumer reviews on the Internet. Big Internet sites have policies in place to assure that reviews are legitimate and untainted. TripAdvisor.com's is, "Property owners are welcome to encourage their guests to submit user reviews upon their return home, but they are not allowed to offer incentives, discounts, upgrades, or special treatment on current or future stays in exchange for reviews."
"Take what happened to Pam Stucky when she recently made a reservation at a small hotel in Scotland. Before she arrived, the owner sent her an e-mail soliciting a recommendation on TripAdvisor, even though she'd never been to the hotel."
Back in 2008, I posted news of Duy Pham, a classically trained chef who had been with several noteworthy Denver restaurants, who opened Restaurant Fifteen Twentyone in Pueblo, a city known more for its Mexican food and blue-cheese curds than for French bistros. Someone who clearly had it out for him left some nasty, unsubstantiated accusations as comments to my posts, all under the cloak or anonymity. I deleted them, not because I believe any restaurant or other business is immune to criticism, but undocumented, anonymous vituperative comments have no place here. I haven't been in Pueblo in a while, but as far as I can tell, it's still around -- no mean feat in a struggling community and a shaky national economy.
On the flip side, I didn't have much good to write about the food at Boulder's Scotch Corner, a pub with a great location, good booze, abysmal food and questionable service. I try to give any business the benefit of the doubt when I write, because I am mindful of the challenges they all face, but in my post, I took the kitchen to task about such simple-to-rectify issues as toast that was burned on one side and untoasted on the other, square pastry dough placed on a round pot-pie so that it came out with four burned triangles, two salt shakers and no pepper on our table, and no shakers of either sort on others, I suspected that the owners encouraged their loyal customers to leave comments debating my evaluation. If they had trained their kitchen and waitstaff a little better, the pub might still be in business -- although more likely, the high cost of occupying a large space on a visible downtown corner was partly an issue in its demise.
But back to the original topic, we travel writers are always suspected of being unobjective because travel providers court us with generous hospitality. I would like to think that we can be more objective because we have been to more hotels, flown on more airlines, have dined out more, etc. than the overage traveler who could be more susceptible to the offer of an upgrade or some other perk in exchange for a favorable post somewhere.
Elliott cited MeasuredUp.com, a social network site created in 2006 to enable customers to review and rate how how businesses have treated them. It serves as a conduit for complimentary or aggrieved customers to the appropriate individuals or departments in a business and for those businesses to respond. Travel is one of MeasuredUp.com's categories. If you have a comment or complaint, it's another avenue to get the word out, pro or con. And of course, TripAdvisor. Yelp and other social networking sites do welcome legitimate, uninfluenced comments.
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