Get Real: Hotel Review Sites on the Web

Yes, it's Real

Website guru and internet travel writer Durant Imboden recently pointed out an article that investigates the reality behind all those hotel review websites on the internet, such as the one I sometimes look at out of sheer boredom -- Fodor's Asia Chat (or whatever they call it). The Fodor's site is almost exclusively geared to very upscale travelers, who love to praise or damn their favorite hotels in Bangkok, and I find the site quite intelligent and useful for a travel writer trying to keep up with hotel developments in that part of the world.

Obviously, there are some shills on the site that hope to promote their favorite hotels in Bangkok or Bali, and you rarely get seriously critical comments about the properties, but it's not always a love fest. But you probably need to take the effulsive praise with the grain of salt, especially with the larger and more mainstream websites that invite commentary from the unwashed masses.

Here's what Durant has to say about the controversy:

The article describes how some hotels and resorts have "reputation management" departments that submit positive reviews under pseudonyms to user-review sites like TripAdvisor.com and IgoUgo.com. Others offer incentives to guests who post positive reviews at such sites. The bigger review sites are having to respond with more editorial control and penalties for hotels that abuse the system.

In another publication, PC MAGAZINE, columnist Bill Machrone writes about "turking," which involves the payment of tiny amounts (e.g., a penny per review) to users who name the three best pizza parlors in Philadelphia, the three best sushi bars in Silicon Valley, etc. Machrone talks about the dangers that turking could encourage a "vast, unregulated workforce, well under the minimum-wage radar" and speculates that "people clever for their own good" might pack turking-based sites with "multiple reviews, fake identities, and computer-reworded opinions." See:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1917750,00.asp

It seems that publishers who rely on free or almost-free contributions are beginning to discover that they get what they pay for. :-)

- Durant

Durant Imboden
Europe for Visitors
http://europeforvisitors.com

And here's a short bit from the New York Times article:

Business travelers like Michelle Madhok used to consider online hotel reviews a reliable reference.

Travelers once took reviews on Web sites at face value, but the proliferation of voices and the manipulation by hoteliers have made skeptics of the site operators and their readers.

Officials at TripAdvisor.com say they closely monitor reviews to eliminate any spurious recommendations for certain hotels.
Whenever she traveled to an unfamiliar city, Ms. Madhok said, she clicked on sites like TripAdvisor.com or IgoUgo.com, where she found thousands of ratings written by real guests.

Or so she thought.

Ms. Madhok, the president of the Internet shopping site Shefinds.com, said she was now becoming increasingly skeptical of what she saw online. "I read reviews of hotels that I've stayed at," she said. "And they're just wrong. I wonder if they've really stayed at the hotel."

On a recent visit to a spa in New York, she says, her doubts turned to disbelief: the resort was discreetly offering a free reflexology treatment to customers who posted a positive review of the establishment on Citysearch.com. "It was very troubling," she said.

As Web sites that publish guest hotel reviews become more influential, some hotels — from bed-and-breakfasts to large resorts — are going to greater lengths to ensure that their properties are rated highly. Their efforts, analysts say, range from encouraging guests to write flattering reviews to, in extreme cases, submitting bogus recommendations to Web sites.

The hotels justify their actions, the analysts say, as a counterweight to out-of-context rants by disgruntled guests; both sides are exploiting a new technology that lacks the safeguards of the traditional travel guidebooks, which are written by professional writers and edited for accuracy.

It was not always so. In the early days of hotel review sites on the Web, the Internet was a less diverse place, and the postings generally came from like-minded travelers, the experts say. But as more and more people are using the Internet to make travel decisions, there are more incentives, and opportunities, to manipulate reviews.

The major hotel chains deny that they try to influence online reviews in any way. But publishers at the most popular review Web sites say they have been inundated by fraudulent posts and have had to develop numerous measures to protect travelers.

Analysts and Web site operators say they fear that the effort is a losing battle. "Most sites can't catch a fake review," said Stanley E. Roberts, the chief executive of We8there.com, a lodging and dining review site.

Even so, Mr. Roberts says he reads every review before it is posted — a laborious process that relies on instinct and experience. Still, he said, "I'm never sure if a fake is going to make it through."

The relentless efforts by hotels to influence their online ratings have made some review sites suspicious, if not paranoid. "We assume that every review we get is bogus, and it is bogus until proven otherwise," said Kenneth J. Marshall, who publishes HotelShark.com, a small hotel review site "We have to look for a reason to publish it." Indeed, more than half the reviews he receives do not make the cut, he said. As a result, only about 1,200 hotels are reviewed on his site.

IgoUgo.com, another ratings site, takes a different approach to ferreting out fraudulent write-ups. The guest commentaries it publishes are put into context, with detailed information about each reviewer, "so you can see exactly who is writing the review and if that person has similar travel needs to yourself," said Jim Donnelly, the site's vice president for marketing.

IgoUgo counts about 670 active business travelers in its membership. Their postings are also monitored by editors as an extra precaution.

TripAdvisor, which is owned by Expedia, is perhaps the best known of the hotel ratings sites and proclaims it is the largest, with more than three million reader reviews. It is so concerned with review fraud that it hired Reed Meyer to create a fraud detection algorithm to sniff out suspect reviews. Mr. Meyer would not disclose how the program worked because he did not want to tip off hotels on how to circumvent it. Nor will he say how many reviews have been weeded out by the application.

Christine Petersen, TripAdvisor's senior vice president for marketing, said, "Hotels periodically try to get around the system." In one memorable case, an Italian hotelier offered the site a bottle of Limoncello di Capri liqueur if the site would remove a poor review of his property. The site declined.

"If a hotel is caught trying to influence the process, they're put on a watch list," she said. "That influences their ranking, and is a huge black mark against them."

New York Times Link

Fly the Friendly Skies

Saudi Airlines

Are you sick and tired of long, boring trans-Pacific flights, stuffed into economy class with horrid food and surly waitresses? A very clever guy in Saudi Arabia may have discovered the solution.

Cargo worker sleeps, wakes up in Turkey

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) — It was a short flight, and Muhammet Ahmet Mursi slept almost the whole way. No leg room complaints. No cramped seats. No annoying intercom announcements.

Only the heat wasn't on and it started to get a little cold. Cold enough to make Mursi wake up. Cold enough to make him realize he was in the cargo hold. Cold enough that he screamed so loud the pilots heard him.

Mursi, a cargo worker in Saudi Arabia, fell asleep on the job Wednesday night as he loaded the suitcases of Muslim pilgrims from Turkey on a Turkish Airlines flight from the Saudi port city of Jeddah to the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

Mursi woke up somewhere over southeastern Turkey, television station NTV reported Thursday. He managed to make himself heard from among the boxes and suitcases he was stretched out on, prompting the pilots to pump him some hot air. Bearded, wearing all orange and on a stretcher, Mursi was seen being taken from an airport in Diyarbakir, Turkey for medical treatment at a local hospital. Yusuf Yagmur, a doctor, said Mursi was suffering from pneumonia.

"The patient was in a panic and he had pneumonia," Yagmur told Anatolia news agency. "His treatment will take a few days." He will be returned to Saudi Arabia, probably on a seat, when his treatment is complete, NTV said.

USA Today Link

MediaBistro Tips for Travel Writers/Photographers

Hindu Pilgrims by Carl Parkes

MediaBistro may sponsor ongoing seminars for prospective travel writers, but they rarely post articles about the craft, so I was surprised to see this story today with a very sensible tips for any and all travel writers. Take your damn camera along and take your best photos, to illustration your story and perhaps boost your paltry income from the writing itself.

Freelance writing and freelance photography often seem like completely different worlds. However, there is one genre where writers and photogs are often the same people: travel writing. To save money, publications often ask travel writers to turn in their trip pictures if they're useable for the piece. Not only do you get a nice clip with a published photo credit, you get extra money as well. Most of us though are new to invoicing and formatting photos for publication, so I spoke with a few travel writers on what other writers should know about selling their pictures.

"I have sold my pictures with several other non-travel stories to national magazines," says Gayle Formon, who teaches mb's Travel Writing Boot Camp. "Editors usually asked me to take photos and if they used any of them, I would simply ask them what their page rate was and who I should bill."

"The issue of shooting for your own articles did come up in my last class, and students had an opportunity to talk to travel editors about it. Certainly, when working for, or pitching, a smaller (poorer) publication, if you can come back from a trip with some fantastic shots, that can only work in your favor. If I had a good photographic eye, I would certainly tell an editor, maybe even show a portfolio.

Some editors will be glad to get two for the price of one, but the bargain should be simply that they don't have to pay to send a writer and a photographer to a place. Writers should expect to be paid separately, even if it's just a token amount. Otherwise, they're letting themselves be taken advantage of--which happens all too often in the freelance world. If I were given the assignment to shoot and report, I'd take it with the understanding that the photography assignment is on spec.

If they like something enough to use it, they should pay for it. Again, most pubs have a page rate, and pay a set amount based on size of the picture. I never brought up payment until after pictures were chosen for a layout, and then I simply asked how much the rate was and who I should bill."

Travel writer Bill Becher very helpfully sent me several tips on how writers can take and tell the best pictures they can to supplement their pay for a travel writing clip:

"'Do we have art?'" is the constant refrain of newspaper editors. (For some reason, newspaper people refer to photographs as "art"). If you can say yes, you'll increase the chance your story will be published and you'll earn more money. If you're writing on assignment for a glossy magazine, congratulations, but you'll probably find that the magazine will assign a photographer. So the rest of this discussion will focus on newspaper travel sections.

Pay for photos depends on the paper and its circulation, most will have a going rate (from $25 to $150 per photo and up, depending on size, quality and black and white or color).

Here are 10 tips for budding travel photographers:

1. Think like a movie director. Don't turn in all shots of scenery from a distance. Take an overall establishing shot, then a closer shot of people doing something that helps tell your story, then a really tight shot of something. An example might be an overall shot of a pink sand beach with palms and thatched huts, a shot of a couple of people coming out of the surf, and a close-up of starfish washed up on shore.

2. Get caption info. You don't need model releases for editorial use, but you should be able to supply a couple of sentences describing what's in the photo and names and hometowns of people featured in your shots. Check spelling.

3. Hold the camera steady! Many photos are too fuzzy ("soft") because of camera shake, especially with point and shot cameras. Use a tripod or lean against something when you shoot. But be sure to move around between shots and try different angles. For best light, shoot early or late in the day.

4. Most newspapers are entirely digital these days. If you only have slides or prints the paper will probably be able to scan negatives or slides, but digital is the way to go. Your camera should be capable of taking an image at least 2,500 pixels on the large side, this usually translates to a 5 mega pixel camera or better. More is better as it allows cropping. You may be asked to summit photos via e-mail, FTP, or a CD. Advanced digital cameras should be set to Adobe RGB II mode and sharpening turned off.

5. Good equipment like a digital SLR camera with selection of lenses and flash helps but I've sold many photos shot with a 5-7 mega pixel point and shoot camera. Set the camera on the highest resolution .jpg file. Don't edit it in Photoshop, even if you think you know what you're doing, let the paper's photo editors do that. Especially don't sharpen photos, as this needs to be done to press requirements.

MediaBistro Link