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Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

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Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#151

Post by e40 »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #121

So I agree with what appears to be the overwhelming majority that this policy is probably legally unenforceable and was destined to backfire as soon as it was posted on the interwebs, but... I think they have a legitimate problem and I'm wandering what alternate solutions we can come up with. The person planning the wedding (may or may not be the people actually getting married) thinks this is a good place for the we…

I'm wandering what alternate solutions we can come up with.

It's really simple: reply to negative Yelp reviews and state your case. If you are reasonable, then people will understand. This is also called taking the high road. It works a lot better than the stupid tactic they have employed.

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#152

Post by djur »

judk wrote: post #112

A bride is a business partner, forcing guests to stay at the hotel. How is this different from docking an employees salary for unsatisfied customers?

1) Docking employees' salary is immoral and (in the US) illegal. 2) The bride is not a business partner; she is a customer. 3) The guests are not forced to stay at the hotel, unless the wedding invitations come with an "or else" clause.

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#153

Post by ctdonath »

baddox wrote: post #3

If the hotel is clear about these terms, then I don't see much of a problem with this. It makes it really easy to know to pick a different hotel.

By the time you get around to reading all the fine print, you're pretty mentally committed to signing. If your bride-to-be has her heart set on the quaint old hotel, is already buying decorations to match, telling people the preliminary plans (and they're starting to book in advance), etc ... and then you get down thru the fine print, about to seal the deal, and you see an absurd "you'll be charged $500 for each negative review by people you don't control", are you REALLY going to walk away from the deal? Really?

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#154

Post by Vik1ng »

potatolicious wrote: post #122
TallGuyShort wrote: post #121

So I agree with what appears to be the overwhelming majority that this policy is probably legally unenforceable and was destined to backfire as soon as it was posted on the interwebs, but... I think they have a legitimate problem and I'm wandering what alternate solutions we can come up with. The person planning the wedding (may or may not be the people actually getting married) thinks this is a good place for the we…

It does seem a bit unfair, but at the same time the reviews aren't just a measure of how much the bride and groom will enjoy the place, it's also a measure of how much everyone else does as well. Perhaps "many of your guests will hate this place" is a valuable signal to couples picking venues. Honestly, if you've been a legitimate guest of a particular venue IMO it's perfectly fine to leave a review about it. The peo…

But then it's just as valid to write a bad review about a McDonalds restaurant your group of friends decided to go to, because the wine selection sucked.

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#155

Post by [deleted] »

danielweber wrote: post #63
omni wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true in a vacuum. However, the high rating they have is clearly unjustified since they have been extorting people to remove negative reviews. Some collective action against the gaming of the system is called for and, I think, ethical in this case. Try thinking of it from the perspective of their competitors that don't extort their customers.

clearly unjustified You don't know that. they have been extorting people You don't know that. Some collective action against the gaming of the system is called for Oh, geeze. If gaming the system is bad, then stop gaming the system . If someone really wanted to put the screws to these people, then they would find a patron who has actually had that $500 policy used against them, implicitly if nothing else. It would re…

[deleted]

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#156

Post by Vik1ng »

67726e wrote: post #148
Vik1ng wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 negative Yelp reviews have been posted today (so far), ouch... What's Yelps policy towards such fake reviews? Obviously most of those people have never been to that place.

I went through and read them all and they don't exactly seem "fake" in that the reviewer doesn't claim to have visited to the location. They are all complaining about the policies and attitude of the place, which can pretty well be gleaned from reading the policies on the site.

So you think it is valid to leave a 1 star review for a restaurant, because you don't like the menu posted in their website?

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#157

Post by vonmoltke »

baddox wrote: post #42
nmjohn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is extorting guests into not leaving bad reviews online - regardless of service. I'm not really sure how one would think this is okay!

It's not extorting if they are clear about these terms before you decide to book the hotel.

You are correct, it is not extortion. It's blackmail.

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#158

Post by madaxe_again »

ctdonath wrote: post #108

Maybe it's the "star rating" system that's broken. When reviewing rated product/service offerings, I go straight to the 1-star reviews. Skimming those, I differentiate the "valid complaints" from flukes (a small failure rate is understandable), unrealistic expectations (it's a vintage hotel, not a new Hilton), tangential problems (Amazon didn't smash the box, the shipper did), hysteria (political opposition isn't a r…

It's not just the star ratings that are broken, it's the entire hospitality system.

Having had the opportunity to take a good, long stare at the underbelly of how hotel rooms are arbitraged, marketed, booked, and how the ensuing reviews and PR is cultured, the whole damn thing is a cartel controlled by surprisingly few entities and individuals. Bookings all funnel through systems like TRX and concur, all of whom take a slice (the actual hotelier, if there is one, tends to get about as much as a recording artist in terms of percentages - and they often end up PAYING booking engines and arbiters to fill capacity), and reviews are similarly curated and controlled. There are numerous businesses whose entire function is controlling ratings for hotels and hotel groups - and they use every dirty trick in the box.

We worked on a startup which did hotel bookings in such a fashion that it circumvented this ratings cartel - and promptly had several major groups refuse to work with them, until they played the game.

It's dirty, monopolistic, and so full of anti-trust it's not funny - but lobbying.

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#159

Post by fragsworth »

ben1040 wrote: post #145
ctdonath wrote: post #108

Maybe it's the "star rating" system that's broken. When reviewing rated product/service offerings, I go straight to the 1-star reviews. Skimming those, I differentiate the "valid complaints" from flukes (a small failure rate is understandable), unrealistic expectations (it's a vintage hotel, not a new Hilton), tangential problems (Amazon didn't smash the box, the shipper did), hysteria (political opposition isn't a r…

>Maybe it's the "star rating" system that's broken. While less so for product reviews, I feel like restaurant/hotel reviews are more like movie reviews. Just like Battlefield Earth, there are some bad restaurants that universally will get panned. And there are some just wonderful establishments everyone will love, just like Shawshank Redemption. But for everything in between, it's a matter of taste, which is why Netf…

> for everything in between, it's a matter of taste, which is why Netflix tries to infer your tastes and predict a star rating for _you_ rather than gives you an aggregate rating.

This works only to an extent. There are many movie qualities that can be very important to you that you can't represent with a 5 star rating system. Because of this, the main way Netflix clusters your preferences is by the things they know, like genre, actors, producers/directors, etc., and they assume your high rating is (in part) for these things.

This problem is much more prevalent in music suggestions (Pandora, Spotify, etc.) where your preferences are determined almost entirely by genre and artist.

The problem is even more prevalent in ratings for restaurants. If you give 5 stars to an excellent Mexican restaurant, Yelp and Google Maps will suggest to you other Mexican restaurants.

So as a savvy user, you are in a strange position of having to realize how they are clustering things, and give 5 stars to things you don't really like, because you want to be given recommendations for high-rated things in those genres.

And you can't give 1 star to a movie in a genre that you like, otherwise the system will think you hate that genre.

So I would agree with the previous comment, that the "star rating" system is totally broken.

Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online

#160

Post by chippy »

dm2 wrote: post #16

What a horrible policy, it won't end well for them. http://www.yelp.com/biz/union-street-guest-house-hudson?sort... 10 negative Yelp reviews have been posted today (so far), ouch... http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g47931-d490934-Revie... Their website navigation is a very discrete image map in the middle of the page, http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/ obviously this was someone's first website. It's probab…

off topic, but why don't people use image maps anymore?
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