Customer Reviews - Good or Bad?

There is much debate as to the benefit of customer reviews on sites like TripAdvisor, ReviewCentre and HolidayWatchdog (owned by TripAdvisor!) for destinations, industry and the visitor. I believe that our visitors are more savvy than we think and they take reviews they find on these sites with a pinch of salt, although it may ultimately be a deciding factor between chsoosing from a selection of accommodation providers.

To try and counter-act fake reviews (i.e. Hotels uploading a positive review on their own property) the European Union annouced a new Directive last year which is in force now that makes it illegal to "falsely representing oneself as a consumer". This may become very difficult to police, however it may deter some businesses as they will not want to take the risk of getting caught!

Having used sites like ActiveHotels and LateRooms, they have review services, however you can only write a review after you have completed your stay; the visitor gets an email sent to them asking for a review to be written - this could have far more authenticity than the more open sites like the ones listed above.

ThomasCook this week annouced that they are to build their own review forum allowing customers to upload reviews, videos and photos of their resorts due to mistrust in sites like those listed above being abused.

I think the key thing is that customer will use all sorts o fthis channels to find out the real picture of a property - the businesses own website being the shop window is a lso a key indicator on the quality of an estabishment.

"Facebook" no. 1 one search term in the UK

Recent research from Hitwise UK shows that the social networking site, Facebook has overtaken Bebo) to become the most searched for term in the UK.

The social networking site has circa 40million users worlwide and I believe a good opporuntity to promote destinations and individual tourism businesses. The website very simply allows your to connect with friends and colleagues, then create Groups to allow people to upload photos and share stories.

A good example of how Facebook has been used to promote an Event is the group Tar Barrels which currently has over 1000 members, this is an excellent use of Facebook is sharing information on a quirky event and a means to getting a message to over 1000 people relating to a particular interest - A hotel could add a post to the group indicating there is a special offer on over the dates of the event, takes 5 minutes to do and doesn't cost a penny!

Lights, camera, action!

Online video is an excellent free marketing opporuntity for businesses and destinations. If you have a video of your tourism property, why don't you upload this onto the internet? It has been quoted that 80% of people researching travel online will search for videos before booking a trip. Whether that's a video on the destination or the potential Hotel they wish to stay in.

There are lots of Free video hosting sites on the internet - one of the most popular YouTube which is currently the 6th most visited site in the world! - why not get out your camcorder, film your property and surrounding area and upload to all of these sites:

http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.revver.com/
http://video.google.com/
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.vimeo.com/

You can usually add some content including a website link, so make sure you add your businesses website address in.

Hello and Welcome!

First of all, welcome to my new (and very first) e-tourism blog!

I work within the tourism industry on IT related projects and always keep a watching on eye on internet developments. As there is lots of different sites ocntianing this kind of information I wanted to try and collate that into the one place to enable you to have a central place to visit.

I would welcome your comments, opionins and ideas on anything I post (please keep it clean!).