The Innkeeping Blog

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Two times this week I have been contacted by innkeepers who were threatened or potentially threatened with fraudulent reviews to extort money or to inflict damage.

One innkeeper wrote to me the following:

I am having job performance issues with my college student – he perceives that the problem is me and not his job performance.  He relayed to another staff member (how do they think I won’t find out?) that his friends said he should go on TripAdvisor and pretend to write a review as a guest and make a comment that they liked everything about the inn, except how the owner treated her employees.

Another innkeeper told me that one of his guests stayed for a few nights and said she suffered several bed bug bites during her stay.  To make a long story short, they had the inn inspected for evidence of bed bugs (and they do wrap their mattresses), and there was no evidence.  The guest mentioned the possibility of writing a review on TripAdvisor about it, before she requested a full refund for her stay.  The innkeeper naturally doesn’t want to give in (and does not plan to).

We’ve known for a long time that people have been using TripAdvisor as a weapon in certain circumstances.  The most common one I’ve heard about is when guests want to cancel towards the last minute, but they don’t want to pay the agreed-upon cancellation fee.  If the innkeeper holds true to the policy, the guests get upset and threaten a negative review on TripAdvisor if they don’t get their deposit back.  This is despicable and unscrupulous in my humble opinion, but it happens.  Because the system does not verify the veracity of this guest (Did he actually make a reservation?  Did he stay there?  Who knows?), and because reviewers can remain anonymous, reviewers have the upper hand in these unfortunate situations – a true weakness in today’s online review systems.  When I’ve told stories like this to my contacts at TripAdvisor in the past, they seem genuine in their desire to fight fraud.  After all, their system becomes less valuable as more fraud gets into the database of reviews.  They have automated tools that can detect some of it, but the rest is left to human interpretation of the event as explained by the reviewer and rebutted by the innkeeper.

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• Online ranters increasingly pay a price | Seattle Times Newspaper http://t.co/BOYBNAn #
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Photo of White Doe Inn courtesy of Jumping Rocks Photography

Have you ever tried to get someone to try something you just knew they would like, but found it hard to convince them?  That’s what I feel our industry has been up against for decades – trying to get travelers to try B&Bs.  There is no question with the sharp growth of the industry in the 80s and 90s and the marketing power of the internet since the mid-90s, millions of travelers have experienced our great product.  We have loyal customers who understand the value of a fantastic B&B stay.  But there are many more travelers out there who have never stayed at a B&B – either because of one of the many “myths” or negative perceptions they might already have, or (according to our own research) staying at a B&B doesn’t even cross their minds as an option when booking travel.  Whatever the reason, we all know in our industry what a fantastic product we have.  With the rise of alternative lodging options and the sincere efforts of hotels to deliver an experience more like ours, we need to press forward and start getting more people to book stays at B&Bs.  Our industry has to start doing something different and fresh to enter the consciousness of the traveler.  We want people spreading the word about B&Bs in ways now possible that were impossible before.  Enter – Better Way to Stay.

PAII wants to get more people talking, Tweeting, Re-Tweeting, status updating, sharing, linking, forwarding and emailing about B&Bs.  We don’t want to build another directory.  We want to get more travelers checking out what the industry already has – some great assets that have been around for years.  I’m talking about the B&B directories, travel sites, state and local association web sites, your web sites, and ultimately clicking the “Book Now” button more and more.  As your industry’s trade association, it’s part of our DNA to want to do this.  We want to create buzz and attention for the great businesses in our marketplace.

For years innkeepers have wanted PAII to build an effective directory of our members.  They figured it would be the silver bullet for membership growth and ultimate stability and success for PAII.   The fact is that the horse is out of the barn on that one – several directories have been around since the mid-90s and are leagues ahead of what we could do from a search engine optimization standpoint.  We don’t want to compete with them – or you, the innkeeper!  Building our own directory – if we were to be effective in the search engines – would mean having us compete with you for premium placement on search result pages.  There are some great B&B directories and association web sites that have been delivering value for years to innkeepers.  We don’t want to compete with them – we want to bring more traffic to them!

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