Lay My Hat

Not sure where to put this so thought I'd bung it here for anyone who's interested.

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketi ... ar-reviews

I'd go further than him - I'm concerned that 5-star reviews distort the expectations of our guests. I want good reviews but if one of my guests calls my apartment "a perfect choice" ...how the hell am I supposed to live up to that?

Maybe that happens in some industries but my TA reviews are all third party unrelated non friend guests so in that respect I don't agree with quite a bit of his blog.
I do like the concept of asking people 'How did we do' though.

I have to agree with a lot of that article. I know of a house near me which has one very honest, detailed and rather negative real review and the rest are clearly fakes. I'd imagine that most property owners are not going to do this but many business even go to the extreme of paying for fake reviews.

Leaving the polite 5 star reviews is becoming the norm and almost expected of people these days. The same happens on ebay too. However, given enough reviews, a visitor should be able to start to distinguish between fake, vindictive or genuine reviews. It's still hard to ignore a difference between seeing 5 stars and 4, even if the 4 star one may actually be more genuine.

One thing that does wind me up is businesses that ask you to rate them every time they answer a support email. I recently asked HA why I'd been charged a "non EU owner" fee for a deposit transfer to a French bank and their response simply avoided the question. Then along comes the "How do you rate us" email. Guess what I replied?

I have never been a fan of reviews as I totally agree with no.1 in the article. That for me shows that basing a decision on a review is ridiculous. Personally I wouldn't do it.
However the websites are making such a big deal out of them that to not have them....or to have less rather than more, could make you stand out for the wrong reasons.

I don't actively canvas reviews, and only a couple of the guests who have said they want to leave one, actually have. What can an owner do about that? I wouldn't want to be pushy.
I have mentioned it casually to guests, that have rebooked this year, that OD are now taking reviews, and so they've kindly left one. That of course then confirms point no.2. Most of my reviews are biased.

I hope it is a fad that will die out....and I think it will. However I was told a few years ago (when working for an internet co) that reviews are good for SEO, so the company introduced them. That's probably not the case now.

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