Everyone a Hotel Critic

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Everyone a Hotel Critic

Written by Administrator

Tuesday, 06 April 2010 09:48

The last time anyone in the hotel industry stopped to count, there were about 50,000 hotels and nearly 5 million rooms in the United States. I never saw a "trustworthy" guesstimate on the total number of hotels and rooms worldwide.

Like many of the hotels in the world and have stayed in the rooms? More to the point, as many of the establishments that I, the friendly neighborhood talking head, an expert on business trips, stayed in?

I can not answer for you, but I can answer for me: It is not enough. At least not enough to suggest, with some journalistic credibility that I know every place desirable, or even a desirable place in every city, town, village or suburban office park airport on the planet. So of course I refer to user-generated sites such as Trip Advisor and its many competing views on what to visit and what hotels to avoid. And needless to say, I urge you to do the same whenever you need guidance on the presentation in an unfamiliar place or are looking for a new experience.

What is peculiar about these two statements is the vehemence with which many who claim to be experts on business trips who disagree. They are shocked, shocked! To discover that you hear a bunch of real people instead of hanging on his every pronouncement as if it were received wisdom from heaven hotel.

"The whole emphasis on user-generated content is foolish," thunders Arthur Frommer, whose 1957 guide to Europe on $ 5 a day, sparked the move Travel postwar middle class. "I was the first person to use it back [in 1960]. Then I realized I was being manipulated mass."

"There has to be a better way to get authentic review on the hotels," complains Chris Elliott, a syndicated travel columnist and radio host who has done a good job exposing some of the flaws inherent in Trip Advisor and its ilk.

The antipathy of professional journalists travel to the sites generated by the user is understandable, I guess. Anyone (including yours truly) do not like someone do for free what you are paid to do. Some, like Elliott legitimately worry about the lack of comments generated by users, but they forget that the professionals who admitted having forged guides worldwide. Others, such as Frommer's, we simply can not accept that you can actually have their own ideas about how to travel and how much to spend.

A lot of antagonism is also predictable. The same attacks were aimed at the Zagat Survey of diners in the restaurant when he became popular in the foodie circles of New York in early 1980. In 1986, when it helped introduce the New York Zagat guide for business nationally through a story in the magazine Frequent Flyer, there was a torrent of criticism from professional food writers who thought Tim and Nina Zagat destroy " legitimate criticism restaurant. "

Twenty-five years later, business travelers know that intelligent information sharing is a very valuable exercise, and the Internet is an irreplaceable tool for doing so. As I pecked around sites like Trip Advisor, Shark Hotel, Boo.com, Venere.com, and even user-generated comment about the Web presence of printed guides Fodor's, I have developed some rules of the road that I think review would be useful to listen.

Aim for the Sweet Spot

Unlike printed guides Zagat, who pasteurize and homogenize comments before reading them, websites, user generated mostly post comment and unrestrained of all new songs. That means you need to separate the extremes in his own country. Ignore the messages that can not find fault with a hotel and ignore those that are not good. Somewhere in between is the truth about the general quality of a hotel. And travelers who say the same thing about a property, the greater the chance that he is a faithful reflection of the state of things in a particular hotel.

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