Liveaboard reviews?

[Pillpusher]

Their model is subscription/no advertising. (And of course the $19 is for a subscription, not to read one review...)

Not being advertising based has it's advantages, but also limits the number of people contributing. The liveaboards have a relatively small number of customers, and even fewer that are coming from the US and contributing to US oriented publications or sites. And only a small percentage of people ever leave reviews on anything. So yeah, statistically it's tough and it's hard to find reviews on a lot of stuff. For my part, I prefer to post reviews anonymously. And unless something has changed, Undercurrent won't let you do that, even as a subscriber. So I choose not to leave reviews there.

Honestly, I don't see a single advantage to it... At least nothing worth $19 considering how, as you mentioned, it lessens the number of reviews. Good point about the % of guests not being from English speaking countries. Though, take a place like KBR in Lembeh. Roughly the same demographics of visitors. Similar countries of origin. Around the same number of guests per week, or at least close. Yet, on TripAdvisor, KBR has 241 reviews, 208 of which are in English. Yet, you're lucky to find even one review on a dive boat. I have to think that the main difference is that one is a free site and the other wants it's reviewers to pay $19.

 

[drrich2]

Trip Advisor is a generalist travel site; Undercurrent is a special interest (scuba) site. I wonder to what extent divers tend to post their reviews on specialty sites like Scuba Board, Undercurrent, etc..., vs. how many post on Trip Advisor, and whether they're the same divers?

Put another way, how many people posting a trip report on Scuba Board head over to Trip Advisor to post one, too?

Richard.

 

[gbf]

You didn't find any reviews for the boats you're looking at on Undercurrent - a pub dedicated to divers exclusively, vs tripadvisor - the site where the owners and employees of the businesses being reviewed tell you you're guaranteed to see mermaids wherea you'll see nothing but sand with their competitor - or the cruise ship divers gun Reef House because they don't put chocolate on your pillow.

Hmm. might be a clue there.

There's a guy on here that calls it "twit advisor" when it comes to scuba reviews, and I tend to agree with him.

I've been an undercurrent subscriber for a really long time. Info from there 1 time saved me enough to pay the freight.

 

[charlier]

Coming in late to the thread. Did you ask your question about the LoB in the appropriate regional community forum? cmr

 

[Pillpusher]

You didn't find any reviews for the boats you're looking at on Undercurrent - a pub dedicated to divers exclusively, vs tripadvisor - the site where the owners and employees of the businesses being reviewed tell you you're guaranteed to see mermaids wherea you'll see nothing but sand with their competitor - or the cruise ship divers gun Reef House because they don't put chocolate on your pillow.

Hmm. might be a clue there.

There's a guy on here that calls it "twit advisor" when it comes to scuba reviews, and I tend to agree with him.

I've been an undercurrent subscriber for a really long time. Info from there 1 time saved me enough to pay the freight.

Yes, that's exactly what I said. Out of the five, now six boats I'm considering, only one of them have any reviews at all on Undercurrent, and it only has one individual review since 2015. So, for me, no, reading one review is not worth $19. I never said that I found liveaboard reviews on Tripadvisor because they don't seem to have that category. I was trying to find a website that does, though. So, he suggested Undercurrent, but, unfortunately, because they are subscription based, they have very few actual reviews, and virtually zero on what I am looking for.

I had a hard time making sense of the second part of your paragraph, but I assume you're saying that most of the reviews are fake on TA? You can click on the user and see what all they have reviewed. That makes picking out fake ones pretty simple. I would be very surprised if more than 5% of the total reviews on TA were fake. Either way, when I'm researching a resort or dive op, at least that gives me info to filter through and draw my own conclusion from.... And for free.

 

[Pillpusher]

Coming in late to the thread. Did you ask your question about the LoB in the appropriate regional community forum? cmr

Not yet. If I get it narrowed down to a couple of different ones and still have any specific questions, I'll probably do that. The only problem is that usually you get a lot of "I did this or that three years ago and...". These ships can change quite a bit in that period of time. But any input is better than none.

 

[Pillpusher]

Trip Advisor is a generalist travel site; Undercurrent is a special interest (scuba) site. I wonder to what extent divers tend to post their reviews on specialty sites like Scuba Board, Undercurrent, etc..., vs. how many post on Trip Advisor, and whether they're the same divers?

Put another way, how many people posting a trip report on Scuba Board head over to Trip Advisor to post one, too?

Richard.

I'm not sure about most people, but I know that I do. I posted a trip report on here when I last went to Indonesia, then I split it up into several TripAdvisor reviews.:
Trip report - N Sulawesi (KBR and Cocotino's-Manado)
It only got one comment, which leads me to believe that most people don't bother reading other people's trip reports unless they are looking for specific info out of it. So, I don't bother with doing them here anymore.

 

[charlier]

Not yet. If I get it narrowed down to a couple of different ones and still have any specific questions, I'll probably do that. The only problem is that usually you get a lot of "I did this or that three years ago and...". These ships can change quite a bit in that period of time. But any input is better than none.

Over a three or four year period, if the boat has the same cruise director, all is usually well. Sometimes a new cruise director will make a substantial difference in the overall operations, sometimes for the best.

I have no financial interest or stake in undercurrent.org, but the intro subscription of $19 (7 months)'is not that expensive. Best travels, cmr

 

[drrich2]

I posted a trip report on here when I last went to Indonesia, then I split it up into several TripAdvisor reviews.:
Trip report - N Sulawesi (KBR and Cocotino's-Manado)
It only got one comment, which leads me to believe that most people don't bother reading other people's trip reports unless they are looking for specific info out of it. So, I don't bother with doing them here anymore.

You never know quite how much impact a trip report is going to have. In my experience, more if it's a very popular destination, ironic since detailed, practical reviews of 'the road less traveled' ought to be of more real world use to help others considering a similar trip.

Another factor is what the report is intended to do. Sometimes to 'share the joy,' show some nice pics, what I might call 'scuba porn,' some to cheer lead a favored dive op., and some to lay out the ins & outs of planning & carrying out a trip. And shades of gray in-between.

Richard.

 

[dlofting]

It only got one comment, which leads me to believe that most people don't bother reading other people's trip reports unless they are looking for specific info out of it. So, I don't bother with doing them here anymore.

Possibly correct, although people could read your report and not comment. It is also nice to have the report in the "archives" when people do come looking for specific information, much like you're doing now.