Trip Advisor Do you use it?

[mfalco]

I have a friend that works for a large hotel chain. She uses it regularly to write good reviews about her hotels, and bad ones about her competitors. She told me it is industry standard for people to visit sites like that to write bad reviews about the competition.

 

[The Chairman]

While I am biased, if you want to dive, you are going to find the BEST information right here... or is that "write here"??? Even if you DON'T want to dive, we have a lot of it covered!

I owe a LOT of that to the creative geniuses like El Orans and the entire moderator staff. They use this info because they travel a lot. Ergo, it makes sense that they want this info to be as pristine and accurate as possible. While I refuse to give out our methodology, we seek out and destroy malicious sock puppets as well as ferret out employees who are ACTING like patrons. Also, when a negative review is placed, we will often contact the resort/charter in question and get their side of the story. This creates a dialog between the resorts and the divers that is not found anywhere else that I am aware of.

So OK, I am not only biased, I am downright PROUD of my ScubaBoard. A special thanks to our USERS who actually provide us the information like no one else can. YOU ROCK!

 

[DivingPrincessE]

I have a friend that works for a large hotel chain. She uses it regularly to write good reviews about her hotels, and bad ones about her competitors. She told me it is industry standard for people to visit sites like that to write bad reviews about the competition.

:no That is so shady...industry standard or not that is really low. Maybe if your friend spent more time working to improve her own hotel instead of time posting fake reviews on trip advisor there would be enough REAL positive feedback that she wouldn't have to worry about it...

 

[Damselfish]

yeah. I mean it's pretty obvious it goes on, but still you think she'd be too embarassed to admit it. I know I would. (ok, actually I wouldn't have a job that made me do that - I guess that's why I'm not in marketing!)

 

[av8er23]

There is not doubt that scubaboard is an excellent source of information for traveling as well as various diving topics. But there are many times when I ask about a specific resort and received little or no feedback. Just recently I asked about “The Royal Cancun” and got no input. I am assuming that this is because no one has ever been there but on trip advisor there are over 400 reviews. I believe that it a pretty valuable source of information. I usually come to the scubaboard when I am curious about the waters or dive sites surrounding my destination. But have not had too much luck with specific resorts that is unless they are located in Cozumel, MX.

The Royal Cancun (Cancun, Yucatan Peninsula) - Resort Reviews - TripAdvisor

 

[gorcio]

I am usually consulting Trip Advisor, especially negative opinions. Mostly to check if people complain about cleaningless or safety, which then rings an alarm bell, if they complain about food. There is a great deal of dumb people rating nice hotels 2 stars and lower cause 'for two weeks there were no chips for lunch, no beans in the morning and we had to go to McDonalds in the neighbourhood'. Also posted some reviews there ... hope they would be useful ...

 

[fdog]

I have a friend that works for a large hotel chain. She uses it regularly to write good reviews about her hotels, and bad ones about her competitors. She told me it is industry standard for people to visit sites like that to write bad reviews about the competition.

Odd you should post this...

Last year we used glowing reports on TripAdvisor to select a non-dive resort. It wasn't as we expected by a long shot, actually we couldn't wait to leave.

After revieving all the different posts by "happy customers" we realized the syntax was all the same...they'd been posted by the resort owner. When we posted the first negative review, he raised a stink about it with TripAdvisor and (amazingly) had our account frozen for review!

Hence I take TripAdvisor reviews with a grain of salt.


All the best, James

 

[Damselfish]

so what happened, did TripAdvisor unfreeze your account or do anything about the reviews that looked fake? What if anything did they say?

 

[Doc]

... when I ask about a specific resort and received little or no feedback. Just recently I asked about “The Royal Cancun” and got no input.

Look at their website Royal Cancun - The Royal Cancun - Royal Cancun Hotel

I am assuming that this is because no one has ever been there but on trip advisor there are over 400 reviews.

Yet on the Royal Cancun website, which is quite extensive and obviously a fabulous property, there is only one mention of the sport: introductory in-pool SCUBA lesson

I GOOGLED "royal cancun" scuba and got not much. It's a high end resort with fabulous... everything. Except that diving thing.

And more to the point: Where on "trip advisor" does it say anything about the quality of the dive operation? [I tried two search engines and got no hits]. You have to assume that it's a contracted operation as their own website has nothing about it- no pics of boats, nothing.

I saw your related SCUBABoard post http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/mexico/220070-royal-cancun-recommended-dive-operators.html, and from the responses, it bears up my suppositions. It's a nice resort. Dive operators are nearby. You got all the response one might expect from a post on a SCUBA Diving board.

It kind of goes to the point of what I said in my original post here. There are dive trips and then there are vacations with some diving. Some of it may be beyond the pool. For that, it's gotta be SCUBABoard.

That aside, I would like to live my remaining years at the Royal Cancun.

 

[mfalco]

:no That is so shady...industry standard or not that is really low. Maybe if your friend spent more time working to improve her own hotel instead of time posting fake reviews on trip advisor there would be enough REAL positive feedback that she wouldn't have to worry about it...

No then it would be just her competition that posted on trip advisor. Anyway she is in sales, so she wouldn't be the one improving the hotels.


Also Tripadvisor has advertising from hotels and resorts on ther website. Do you think they keep bad ratings up for resorts that pay to have the site up?