The Sophistication Of Malice: Online reviews

Once upon a time, in the days of Jack Warner and a clip round the earhole, it was probably the case that, if a British seaside hotel had an issue with a particular guest, then the local bobby would be despatched to calm matters down. "Have we had a few drinks, sir?" But in those days of yore, it was also probable that the badly behaved guest was thin on the ground. Having a few too many drinks was normally resolved by sleeping it off, possibly with the advice of the local bobby, while there were few other reasons for conflict with the hotel. Service? Quality? Neither of them existed in ways that they now do. Guest sophistication was low. Guest demands were low. A good bed, a decent bathroom, a reasonable beef lunch on a Sunday, and the guest was usually more than happy.

Maybe it can all be pinpointed to a time when pop and rock groups of the 1960s began trashing hotel rooms and attracted the publicity and notoriety that went with the television set in several pieces on the street below. But then, there are all sorts of behavioural examples that can be factored into the equation. Drinking went from being a social activity to being a national pastime to be indulged in as often and as intensely as possible. Going on holiday was no longer reserved for the family and, more often than not, one from specific socioeconomic groups. Society shifted its moral axes in all manner of ways. Guests ceased to be guests and became customers or clients, and it was this marketing realisation which heralded the new age, one that the internet was to compound, develop and to unleash. Sophistication, demand had arrived. And so also had customer power, be it well behaved or otherwise.

Going on holiday, rather like most of contemporary living, is a technological phenomenon. No one goes anywhere, moves, sits still without the aid of the world powers that are Google, Facebook and Trip Advisor, three businesses which have engrained themselves so deeply into the consciousness that they are no longer tools but things - ways of life. There are other search engines, other forms of social media, but this trinity is dominant, and from such power comes all sorts of risk.

The tyranny of Trip Advisor has been well enough chronicled, as have legal moves against it. It inveigles its way into the consciousness in a variety of ways, such as with the often crass "best ofs" which can appear to bear little relationship with reality. But these lists are the consequence of the rest of its existence. Fundamentally, it is an automated operation, driven by the user. Greater controls will never be applied. Yes, there is the right of reply, but the damage can already be done.

Trip Advisor isn't totally at fault. There are hotels, some of them Mallorcan, which fully deserve and justify the excoriation they receive. Likewise, there are bars or restaurants which only have themselves to blame. But amidst this criticism (and also the praise, it must be noted), there is the blackmail game. Everyone knows it exists, because it is so transparent. The compensation seeker, the payment avoider, the simply obnoxious, they all issue the threat of a bad review.

Hotels and tour operators, though they may not so say publicly, have blacklists, and hotels now also tools with which they can fight back. Guestscan started in the UK four years ago. As its website says it was created to safeguard hotels and other businesses from "nightmare" guests. Troublemakers can be identified for their misdemeanours, and these troublemakers can very often be the ones who engage in the blackmail game or who take to Trip Advisor and post a condemnatory review because the hotel has had the temerity to give them a rollicking or even booted them out because of their poor behaviour.

In Spain, there is a similar system. It's called EliteBook. It was created through a hotelier necessity to protect against - as the website says - theft, vandalism, excessive or destructive criticism through media on the internet, and blackmail. Subscribers to the service can see who the miscreants are. Information is shared and reputation is, hopefully therefore, maintained.

Reputation has become the theme of contemporary tourism, and it has been made so by the likes of Trip Advisor. There is an upside and a downside to the reviews' system, and the smart business responds effectively to criticism as well as to praise or uses an online reputation management service.

The technological realities of holidaying are a fact of life. They aren't going to go away. And nor are bad behaviour and the malicious reviewer. EliteBook and Guestscan offer ways of fighting back, but even they must know that a blacklisted "customer" can always reply with another malicious review. Sometimes you have to wonder if too much sophistication is a bad thing.

The Worst Hotels In Mallorca

Trip Advisor, bless it, offers a useful means of filling newspaper columns. Short of some copy? Why not use some Trip Advisor Travellers' Choice best-of info? The local media loves this stuff, even if the result of the choice is relatively unremarkable, such as being ranked seventh. I mean, why would you bother mentioning being seventh? Little is the kudos to he had, even if Mallorca can revel in the glory of being the seventh top island in Europe (Santorini is number one).

While Trip Advisor floods media inboxes and news feeds with its top-of-whatever lists, it doesn't make a habit of considering the other side of the travelling choice coin: the lowest of. Such rankings might, I would suggest, be of rather greater interest than the top ones. Rather than the best, which are the worst?

Ever one to undertake a more arduous task than merely regurgitating something from a press release, I have given Trip Advisor a bit of a hand. Want to know the worst hotels in Mallorca? Well, they're coming up right here. Sort of.

I was inspired to delve into the depths of Trip Advisor rankings by a correspondent who informed me that a particular hotel was a "health hazard", where "staff physically and verbally abuse tourists", where robberies are "commonplace" and where the unofficial all-inclusive offer allows guests to drink as much local vodka as they like at a rate of six euros an hour. Pretty good, eh? 

With the proviso that, in order to get a good sample, a hotel had to have more than 100 reviews, I set to work. In fact, it wasn't that arduous. There may be over 1,000 Mallorcan hotels reviewed on Trip Advisor but its rankings system very conveniently puts those with no or few reviews at the end together with the lousy hotels. Click on the places with over a century of reviews, home in on the number of terribles, calculate the percentage and, bingo, you've got the worst. It took far less time than I had imagined.

There is, therefore, a worst top five. My apologies for any hotels that I may have overlooked, but fifth worst is ... . Er, should I actually name and shame? Should diplomacy get the better of me? Perhaps it should. So, being circumspect, I can reveal that the fifth worst is in S'Illot with a 26% terrible rating. "Avoid at all costs," remarked a reviewer. Fourth worst, well, this one's in Alcúdia: 26.2% terrible with "arrogant, ignorant and rude staff". In at number three, we're back in S'Illot, 33% terrible: "we left after two days and paid to fly home". In the runners-up slot, it's Cala Ratjada. 33.8% terrible, and proving that the Germans can be as critical as the Brits, "einfach widerlich" (simply disgusting). And at number one? Yes, it's my correspondent's hotel. Congratulations go to Santa Ponsa. 35% terrible: "if I could, I wouldn't even give this place a one star".

None of this is of course scientific, and one man's hellhole can just as easily be another's little piece of heaven (even our winner manages a 10.3% excellent rating). Moreover, there will be some reviewers who are trying it on: it's the Trip Advisor blackmail game. But when there is a critical mass of rubbish reviews, these have to amount to some proof of poor quality and standards. and it is this - quality - which is a key theme for the island's tourism industry. It needs to be upped. Urgently. And the regional government is demanding that it is.

Overall, the impression from Trip Advisor is that low standards of quality are confined to relatively few hotels, but the few can drag down the reputation of the many. So, what, if anything, can be done?

Certain hotel chains - Meliá is an example - now use reviews as a basis for senior management performance pay. But Meliá is the exception and not the rule. If hotels
won't themselves take action, what about the government? The tourism ministry should be monitoring reviews' sites. It should take note of the poor hotels. It should send in inspectors. It should have powers to apply sanctions, the ultimate one being closure.

Would the government do this? It's doubtful. There aren't enough inspectors, while these are hotels and not easier targets for inspectors, such as bars. As I have previously noted, it is inspection which is likely to be a reason why the new tourism law will not live up to its content. Take the unofficial all-inclusive offers as an example. Will they be registered, as hotels are now required to register any all-inclusive element? And if they're not, who is going to check?

Opinions on reviews' sites cannot be taken as being definitive, but when the level of poor reviews and ratings is as it is with some hotels, they should prompt action. Does Mallorca want quality or not?

Benidorm Better Than Palma

Quite a bit has made of Palma being "The Sunday Times" choice of the best city in the world to live. The town hall in Palma has latched on to it, as have all the local papers. The publicity value is great, though there has been little or no mention of the fact that the author of the relevant article, Paul Richardson, is well-known to the press office at the Fomento del Turismo (Mallorca Tourist Board). Be that as it may.

Though the best city to live in, it isn't the best destination in the world for travellers. Who says? Trip Advisor of course. Palma doesn't even make it into the top ten of Spanish destinations let alone those in Europe or around the globe. The 2015 Travellers' Choice awards make Barcelona the number one Spanish destination and Istanbul the top European city or resort.

Of other places in the Spanish top ten, two are somewhat obscure - La Oliva on the island of Fuerteventura in the Canaries (second) and Llanes in Asturias (fifth). Otherwise, the destinations are as might be expected, albeit minus Palma, and they include - at number ten - Benidorm. Well, what do you think? Benidorm better than Palma? In the end, Trip Advisor awards and newspaper reviews are all rather subjective.

When looking at comments on Spanish news websites under articles about Palma, another place in Mallorca was given honourable mentions. In the opinion of a few of those commenting, Soller is the best place to live, and Soller was in the Trip Advisor Travellers' Choice top ten last year, as also was Calvia. They are nowhere to be seen this year. As I say, all very subjective.

But who needs awards or newspaper articles when Mallorca and the Balearics can boast that it is the national leader in 2015 in terms of an increase in winter tourism. Yes, you have read this correctly. In January and February, the Balearics registered the greatest increase of any region in Spain - 40,000 more tourists, a rise of 20%. This good news has to be placed in perspective, though. The figure of 230,000 tourists is substantially lower than the 380,000 who came to the islands in January and February not so long ago - in 2008 before crisis really struck.

The increase this year cannot disguise the weakness of Mallorca's winter tourism and also one of the laments that German tour operators have, i.e. the fact that so many hotels are closed. The German market rose by 34% in January and February but so also, according to the Frontur survey which measures these things, did the number of tourists opting to stay in private holiday accommodation. This was up by 24%. Who was it who said that private holiday lets add to the impact of seasonality rather than lessen it? Might it have been the tourism minister by any chance?

Lousy Review, Less Pay

Once upon a time, employees would be assessed only by their managers. This was the traditional performance appraisal, an often worthless exercise if, as happened to me on one occasion, it was conducted over a lunch at which the boss, a couple of pre-lunch G&Ts on board followed by a whole bottle of wine to himself, forgot why we were having lunch.

Other systems of appraisal were introduced. There was the upward feedback. Staff could assess the manager, a process which had inherent risks. If Employee A didn't like Manager B, then Manager B could well get a bum assessment. But the purveyors of appraisal systems would insist that these systems would filter out such subjectivity without ever truly convincing everyone that they did, and this was also the case when so-called 360-degree feedback became popular. Anyone could have his or her say. Customers, suppliers, colleagues: they could all have a pop.

These systems weren't of course a free-for-all. Bias was ironed out as much as possible. They wouldn't have been effective or have become as widespread as they did had they just been means of expressing dislike. But they were something of a culture shock for employees or managers who were to discover that there were a number of "stakeholders" whose assessment of performance fell some way short of how the employee or manager would have assessed his or her own performance.

These broader systems of appraisal were all part of a wider culture shock, that of changes to organisations' culture and their ways of doing things. By subjecting personnel to closer scrutiny by these different stakeholders, performance would improve and do so in line with new cultures that were more open to the needs of customers and others.

Into this appraisal mix came technology, and now there is the technology of social media. Customers can have their say like never before, and certain businesses are embracing this customer voice in their assessment of individuals' performance. Comments on Trip Advisor and similar websites are now being used to determine just how much people get paid.

Since the explosion of social media and review and comments' sites in particular, a whole industry of online reputation management has grown up. ReviewPro is one of the leading examples of this monitoring, and its Spanish division works with a whole host of hotel chains. Look at its clients and very familiar names appear: Meliá, Iberostar, Viva and so on.

Meliá is said to be one of the pioneers of using customer comments as part of a quality system through which performance can be measured and remuneration adjusted. Variable pay is partially determined on the basis of these comments; variable pay meaning performance pay, i.e. meeting and exceeding personal and company performance targets. At Meliá, this pay can apparently equate to as much as 20% of overall remuneration, so there is a strong incentive for management to ensure that customer satisfaction is high and also to respond in a thoughtful fashion to any negative comments.

The underlying philosophy is or should be obvious. Customers are at the heart of everything Meliá does, as is the case with any hotel chain. But how well this philosophy is understood by other chains or within Mallorca's tourism industry as a whole is open to some debate. Even among the clients that ReviewPro has, there are individual hotels which are part of certain chains that receive numerous negative comments and little or no response from management.

From surveys that Trip Advisor has done, it has been shown that responding to comments, both negative and positive, is as powerful as the comment itself. Yet, too often there are no responses and when there are they are standard ones issued not by, say, the hotel's director but by someone with a vague public relations job title. 

As with any system of appraisal, using online comments is probably not foolproof. There is greater scope through social media for biased or malicious assessments than there ever was with more traditional appraisal methods. There is also the potential, once it becomes widely known that pay is directly being influenced, for online blackmail, something which does already occur. But then this is something for devisers of systems to take account of.  

In principle, using customer comments is a very good tool for chains to not just monitor management and hotel performance but also to improve it as part of ongoing quality management systems. It should, therefore, be far more widely adopted by the Mallorcan tourism industry which, despite criticisms of standards, is using other methods to improve quality, the SICTED system of quality being one of them.

But there are limits to how useful such a tool is. Many negative comments stem not from poor management at specific hotels but from a lack of investment by chains which leave hotels open to such negativity.

Calvia v. Sóller: Two different bests

At the height of summer the three destinations in Spain with the highest volumes of tourists are Barcelona, Madrid and Calvia. It is a reflection of just how important Calvia is to Mallorca's tourism that it should appear alongside the El Clásico cities. It is also astonishing that it does appear alongside them. In terms of pure recognition, "Calvia" ranks a long way behind other Spanish destinations - Granada, Seville and such like.

All of these destinations - Barcelona, Madrid, Calvia, Granada and Seville - feature in the top ten best Spanish destinations, according to Trip Advisor. Calvia in fact comes eighth, and its ranking has been something to celebrate, as has been the tenth spot for Sóller. Mayors Onieva and Simarro, respectively of Calvia and Sóller, were on an away day in Madrid on Tuesday to pick up the Trip Advisor gongs for these merits (the gongs are a plaque).

In a recent article in which I wrote about land designated as touristic land in the different Mallorcan municipalities, I drew attention to the vastly greater amount of such land which exists in Calvia when compared with other towns. It is small wonder therefore that Calvia leaps into the top three of Spanish tourist density in high summer. There is a lot of touristic provision. There is a lot of quantity.

The success of Trip Advisor is such that it has elevated itself to a position of self-appointed arbiter of tourist taste. It is, to apply a greatly over-used word, a "phenomenon". Phenomenally successful but not, despite its claims otherwise, always phenomenally reliable. Occasionally, it throws up a genuine and pleasing surprise, such as that regarding the Tramuntana mountains, which I also wrote about recently: the number one attraction in Mallorca. But just one problem with it is knowing precisely how things are measured, and the best destinations classification is one of these.

Trip Advisor refers to the use of a "proprietary algorithm" that determines its popularity index. This takes into account quality, recency and quantity, but because it is proprietary, it is exclusive to Trip Advisor and the precise methodology is disclosed only in general and rather vague terms.

Because Calvia attracts the number of tourists that it does, it would be surprising if it weren't in the top ten. Indeed, one might suggest that it should be higher than eighth on quantity alone. As the algorithm takes account of quality as well, what conclusion might one draw from this? I'll leave you to work that out.

Methodology and sheer weight of tourists aside, Calvia's place in the rankings is curious because of its recognition factor. Which tourists actually go to Calvia? Lots of them of course, but Calvia is incidental. They are going to Magalluf or Santa Ponsa or Portals or Illetes or, or ... . Calvia is a Mallorca in microcosm. Much of what you would associate with the island is to be found within its municipal boundaries: high-density tourism; smaller, more intimate resorts; marinas; culture; mountains. Its very diversity makes you wonder what it is that gets it into the top ten. Go to reviews, and you get an answer. Magalluf, Magalluf, Magalluf; Palmanova, Palmanova, Palmanova.

Calvia town hall once made available an outstanding document detailing the natural environment in the municipality (it may still be available but I can't immediately locate it). For many visitors, used only to the densely populated resorts, it would have been a surprising document. I doubt that many of them saw it, though. But what it showed was that Calvia has every right to be among the best destinations because of its diversity. Yet one would have to guess that this diversity is not the basis for Trip Advisor's award. The award is primarily because of quantity.

Sóller being in tenth spot does rather emphasise this point. It has nothing like the quantity of Calvia's tourists. Sóller creeping into the top ten is surprising, whereas Calvia's eighth isn't surprising. Without fully knowing how the algorithm works, one would have to guess that the quality-quantity equation is quite different for Sóller, as on quantity alone it wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance of getting anywhere near the top ten let alone making the top ten.

Both towns will make much of their awards, and good luck to them. If there is an award, why not brag about it; there is nothing wrong in doing so. But Sóller's ranking seems more meritorious than Calvia's and very much more unexpected. The two towns are "bests" from different parts of the tourism spectrum, and where Sóller is concerned, and unlike Calvia, it has the virtue of being pretty much a single entity of town and port, linked by a quaint old tram. Sóller is singular; Calvia is all but countless.

Tramuntana Is Number One

You can't or shouldn't take Trip Advisor at its word. Not for its rankings lists certainly. "Best restaurants" in a given a resort are often laughable. They become best not because they are but because someone has been clever in driving reviews. But sometimes these rankings do bear some semblance of a connection with reality. What is the number one attraction in Mallorca out of 221? If you guessed Pirates you would be wrong. It's number two, says Trip Advisor. At number one, and it is really quite heartening to find it at number one, is the Tramuntana mountain range.

The consortium which promotes the mountains and which was tasked with doing so following the declaration of the Tramuntana as a World Heritage Site has launched a website. About time, too, you might think. The declaration was made in 2011. Very little in promotional terms seems to have happened since. Better late than never, though.

The website is reasonable enough, and so it should be at a cost of 21 grand. It has a good amount of information and the English section, for once, seems to have actually been written in English and not passed through a Google Translate mangle or been Spanglished by a non-native speaker. It's reasonable in the worthy-but-dull sense of reasonable. Plenty of information, plenty of pictures, but no multimedia, interactivity or social media. This would probably cost too much.

Thanks to the press announcement of the site's launch, I knew of its existence and so went in search of it. I entered "Serra Tramuntana", and it was there in Google, though it might be confused with another website with the .eu suffix. The official one is .net. The first thing that occurred to me, though, was whether an English search would get to the site so easily. Its title is Catalan - Serra de Tramuntana - so would "Tramuntana mountains" work? They do. Very well. That's a big plus.

It was when checking that this English search was satisfactory that I noticed the fifth entry on the Google page. It was for the Serra de Tramuntana in Trip Advisor. Five of five stars, the abstract said, and on going into Trip Advisor, I found there were indeed five of five stars. Out of 196 reviews, 163 rated as excellent and 32 as very good. Not a hint of criticism, unless one considers a not-for-fainthearted warning for the route (by car) as being a criticism (which it isn't).

It is mightily reassuring and just a little surprising to find the Tramuntana at number one. It is reassuring in different ways. One very much doubts that someone is hard at it getting visitors to post positive reviews. They are, one has to presume, absolutely genuine and totally unsolicited. As such, it is an example of how one might hope that Trip Advisor would normally work but doesn't. There's nothing wrong at all in positive reviews being solicited - it's good business to do so because Trip Advisor is very powerful - but this can result in something of a credibility issue. We're back to some of those so-called "best restaurants".

A second way in which there is reassurance lies with the fact that the mountains are a natural attraction. Obviously they are. But the term attraction - in tourism circles - tends to mean something which isn't natural. We can all name some of them, and I would do, but to do so might imply a criticism when none is intended. It is the, shall we say, artificial attractions and the association that is made with them as "attractions" which makes the number-one position of the Tramuntana that much more surprising. Trip Advisor is hardly scientific, but occasionally it can be quite revealing, and this is one occasion. For all that Mallorca has its commercial tourist attractions, one that isn't commercial on account of it simply being there and that is ranked number one should tell a story. Mallorca's natural heritage is clearly appreciated and perhaps more so than might be thought.

The mountains can be enjoyed at any time of the year. I know how popular the excursion during the summer season is. As part of the island tour, it is probably the single most popular excursion that the island has to offer. But clearly, the mountains don't have to be enjoyed only during the summer season, and so one comes back, almost inevitably, to the theme of off-season tourism.

The hope with the World Heritage Site declaration was that this would lead to inroads being made into the absent off-season tourism through the promotion of the Tramuntana. With the website, at least there is some tangible evidence of this promotion, and with the Trip Advisor number-one ranking, there is evidence also of how impressed visitors are with the mountains.

Sometimes when number-one rankings are given, the relevant business or authority makes a point of saying so. Is anyone saying anything about the Tramuntana? This brings one back to the website. Because it seems to have neglected social media, there is no link to Trip Advisor and certainly no announcement of the ranking. A trick is being missed. Promotion isn't simply a case of spending twenty thousand euros on a website. One would have hoped that this would have been realised by now. Tramuntana. Number one on Trip Advisor.

* The web address is http://www.serradetramuntana.net

Spreading Rumours

A friend of mine from university days was machiavellian and mischievous in starting rumours. He would sidle up to me and mutter in my ear what his latest rumour-mongering involved. He was extremely adept at it; he should have been a political spin doctor or propagandist. The rumour no sooner planted, it swiftly became fact.

Rumours usually have at least some basis in fact but not always. I was inadvertently responsible for starting one about the creation of a large new British bar in Alcúdia. I had been told by a bar owner that there was to be one along The Mile, the implication being that he was going to be involved with it. Once I'd passed on this information, speculation arose as to where the bar would be. I made a suggestion, and it was no more than a suggestion, and in hardly no time at all, this suggestion had become gospel. Not only was the suggestion wrong, the original information was wrong. There was no large new Brit bar.

Any community, be it a university campus, a resort in Mallorca or wherever, lives by rumour, speculation and gossip. I should know better than to be drawn into speculation but then I am not virtuous in disregarding tittle-tattle. There can, after all, be some truth in tittle-tattle or the speculative. But only some. Invented truths are used to disguise and fill in the gaps of the incomplete initial information, and these truths are, in turn, subject to the process of the Chinese whisper. The rumour can end up bearing no resemblance to the truth, assuming there were ever any substance to it in the first place.

It is a common complaint by expats in the resorts that these are breeding-grounds for rumour, some of it malicious, some of it innocent, some of it potty and some of it, every now and then, relatively accurate. It is a common complaint but it doesn't stop participation. To not engage in rumour and gossip is to be somehow alienated from the community. One could argue that rumour is the common bond that the resort communities possess: their only one.

Hotels are regular targets of rumour. In Puerto Alcúdia, the largest hotel complex of all, Bellevue, has for years been a repository packed full of rumour. It has been and still is a gigantic rumour mill, one that regularly gives rise to speculation that there is "trouble at rumour mill". For once, though, Bellevue's rumour mill has ceased to grind out its grains of speculation, if only temporarily. A different hotel has assumed its mantle.

I am not naming the hotel. Oh no, I am most definitely not naming. There are enough people who know as it is. The speculation surrounding this hotel has actually developed from fact, namely a change of ownership that became public knowledge around three months ago. Though the new hotel chain does not as yet list the hotel on its website, the hotel is named as being from this hotel chain on certain sites. Trip Advisor still has it under the previous hotel chain, and Trip Advisor may assume increasingly greater importance in this story.

There is uncertainty regarding the hotel's future policy. One aspect of this is whether it will remain a Thomson hotel for the British market. It is in fact available for booking next year through Thomson's website, though this has not stopped speculation that it will cease to be a Thomson hotel, that it might cater for different nationalities or that it might become all-inclusive.

I'm not about to go into all the speculation for one very good reason - I don't know whether any of it is accurate. The only way one can truly establish accuracy is by getting information from the horse's mouth. Perhaps I'll ask the new hotel chain and see what it has to say. If anything.

It would appear that a definitive decision regarding future policy has not yet been finalised. If so, this is not unreasonable. Any business has the right to take its time in determining its policy, but, and this is where Trip Advisor and the jungle drums of the internet come into the equation, any business has to be aware of the power of speculation and rumour; it was on the internet where another hotel that changed policy suffered something of a PR meltdown because of uncertainty.

The way to prevent rumours and to stop speculation is to remove this uncertainty. And that means making a clear statement as to policy, if indeed there is to be a new one. It's the rule of the game, especially now, as the biggest rumour community is not in local resorts but all over cyberspace.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Managing Reputations: Trip Advisor review responses

A survey by Trip Advisor might not seem the most objective of devices to discover how highly travellers rate the use of Trip Advisor in making travel decisions, but a finding that 93% of travellers who said that review sites, such as Trip Advisor, influence their plans does not strike me as being the least bit unobjective. It's fully believable.

Trip Advisor, for all it gets some bad press, knows it has to be as reliable as possible. It has an online reputation to keep, after all. And online reputation is what Trip Advisor is all about. The same survey that the website has carried out indicates that a doubling of the number of opinions that an establishment receives can lead, in the case of hotels, to a 3% increase in bookings. However this conclusion is arrived at, you can be sure that the increase would not occur if there were a doubling in the number of opinions and they were all bad.

Monitoring online reputation has now become, or should have become, a must-do management procedure, not just for hotels. Most businesses know that this reputation should be monitored, and many do monitor what is said, but precious few seem to do anything about what is said. Monitoring, as in taking a look, is the least of what this monitoring should entail. Far more important is the response and ultimately the action.

I have conducted an unscientific survey of Trip Advisor, one to see how many businesses do actually respond to reviews. The results are far from encouraging. I chose hotels in Puerto Alcúdia, of which there are 47 ranked on Trip Advisor. From these 47 I selected ten from different parts of the ranking. Of the ten, only one hotel - an Iberostar - had made any response to a review. Another, Bellevue, used to give responses; I know because I was once with the assistant director of the complex when he was looking at reviews and replying. This was in 2009 though. Maybe the hotel has just given up. When a quarter of the reviews for your hotel (770 out of 2894) are rated as "terrible", then it must be very disheartening.

I looked at reviews for another resort, Magalluf. Of half a dozen from the 33 hotels listed, the interaction with reviewers seemed stronger. Two Sol hotels (Meliá) had replied and so had Mallorca Rocks. Eventually. A two month gap between a review being posted and a response being given isn't how this is supposed to work, but better late than never. Of other businesses I looked at, hardly any bothered to reply and when there was a reply, it was irregular and often the same stock answer. One business in Mallorca, and it may be the only one, that does this properly, is No Frills Excursions. It replies to every review and often in great detail.

Why do so few hotels, especially hotels, fail to respond? Do they not care? Some may not, but I don't think this is the reason. They don't respond because they don't create the necessary resources and because they fear making a mistake. While hotels have staff who can speak English well, writing English (or any language) is a different matter. An accidental slip can be worse than not replying at all.

Social media like Trip Advisor are making hotels' lives more difficult if these hotels are dealing with customers from a variety of countries and so with a variety of languages. I have some sympathy for them. But this doesn't mean that they should fudge the issue.

A way of resourcing this online reputation management is to contract it out. Possibly, but how wise is this? The person who responds should ideally be embedded in the hotel (or the hotel group), have perfect written skills, have ready access in order to get information and, as importantly, be in a position to do something about a complaint. All businesses, be they hotels, bars, attractions, whatever, should have reputation managers. These could be owners or directors, but someone should take responsibility and not just for complaints. Even glowing reviews need responding to, otherwise it can appear as if customers are being taken for granted.

Trip Advisor has changed the rules of the customer management game. It is one played out on the internet. One that can bring great benefits but one that can also cause great harm. 93% of travellers are influenced by review sites. That's a hell of a lot of travellers and a hell of a lot who can be turned off by reports of a holiday from hell and of a hotel from hell that fails to acknowledge the problem.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Eight Is Great - And It's Magalluf

There are times when you do have to wonder. There was this news item about Magalluf. Yes, really, Magalluf. You never normally hear anything about Magalluf, do you. If we were all in Pennsylvania, we would currently be preparing for Groundhog Day, and there was something of the groundhog about this news item. Had I not read it before? Or had I not been made aware of what it was reporting before? I had.

This was a good-news news item. For once. Countering the propaganda drive against Magalluf devised by the Goebbels of the British media together with their Leni Riefenstahl video presenters, here was something to be proud of. Number eight. "Two, four, six, eight, what do we appreciate? Magalluf is number eight. Isn't that simply great!" And let's not forget Palmanova. God's in heaven. Lucky seven.

What is this all about? Well, it's all about Trip Advisor Bingo, the fun game for all the family to play. Let's rate our best beach destinations in Spain. One fat lady: on its own, number eight - Magalluf. Let's rate our best hotels for a family holiday in Spain. Tom's tricks: on its own, number six - Viva Palmanova. Cue a quiff-and-swivelling-hip collective of Elvis impersonators at a local karaoke bar: "Viva, Palma Nova; Viva, Palma Nova."

Calvià town hall, battered and bruised by the BBC and the bully-boys of the red tops, is said to have greeted the results of Trip Advisor Bingo "effusively". Come on, everyone, let's run around the empty streets of Maga being effusive. Hooray, hooray, it's a holi-holiday (later this year). Still, let's be grateful, or let Calvià town hall be grateful for anything to be clutched hold of that is positive. Here, have this straw.

There is just one slight caveat to all this calling out of "House". And this is where the groundhog comes into the equation. I knew I had seen all this before, and so I checked. Almost a year ago, I wrote an article about the number one beach destination in Spain. Kelly's eye, Puerto Alcúdia. And which resorts were seventh and eighth respectively? You have probably already worked this out. Palmanova and Magalluf. The town hall, it would appear, has finally cottoned on, about eleven months after everyone else had, to the rankings that Trip Advisor Bingo came up with. Hence, I think it justifiable to allude to straws and the clutching thereof.

Better late than never, though, I suppose. "It is a great satisfaction," says the council's tourism spokesperson. Absolutely it is. "You are number eight." "Who is number one?" "You are number eight" (or should there be a comma after the "are"; this was always the McGoohan ambiguity).

Doubtless there was also great satisfaction at Alcúdia town hall when it became known that Puerto Alcúdia was number one. I recall there being a gaggle of happy, smiling Alcúdia sorts at a travel fair who were being effusive because of their great satisfaction, but this was about the only public display of having won Trip Advisor Bingo. A missed opportunity you might think. Where was the huge banner hanging from the sculpture of the alleged horse screaming out "we are number one"? There wasn't one. But if now Calvià opts to promote Magalluf as number eight, then it is at least taking advantage of this grand, online parlour game.

Because this is what the Trip Advisor Bingos are; representative of the players and sometimes representative of clever businesses who work Trip Advisor to their advantage. There's nothing wrong with this, but when, for example, a best restaurant quite clearly isn't a best restaurant, it should be obvious that the result is all part of the game.

Trip Advisor is just one place that you can play these games. There are many, many others. The best of this, the best of that; award for this, award for that. Fair enough, but when the best is chosen from a self-limited few that happen to have registered in order to qualify for possibly acquiring best status (or number eight status), who can honestly say that it is? No one, if they are actually being honest, because there are potentially tens, hundreds, thousands of others that aren't part of the game.

Magalluf could, just as easily, be number one (it does, after all, have a very fine beach). Or it could be twenty-eighth rather than eighth. Trip Advisor Bingo doesn't really mean anything, other than giving Trip Advisor ever more publicity. But if there is to be great satisfaction from achieving high ranking (or eighth place), then it's best if it is taken in a timely fashion. Like almost a year ago.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Tyranny Of Trip Advisor

Here's a story for you. A Brit family of five go into a Brit bar. They order for all five, one of the orders being for the daily set menu, which happens to feature pork chop as its main dish, and it is the pork chop which is to prove central to this story, as the mother complains that it has not been cooked how she likes it, i.e. no sign of any pinkness and so basically done to a crisp. The pork chop is cooked more, almost of all of it is eaten yet apparently it is still isn't to the lady's satisfaction. When it comes to the bill and divvying up time, the mother and the three children head out of the bar, leaving the father. The bill has had two euros knocked off it because the pork chop hadn't originally been to the mother's satisfaction. The father says that he won't be paying for any of his wife's meal. It was a set menu, it wasn't right for her and (and this is a stunner) her holiday (not her meal) has been ruined as a consequence.

The bar owners, somewhat taken aback, insist that because all of the meal, save for a very small part of the pork chop, had been eaten there was no justification for not paying. It is at this point that the story starts to get slightly confused in terms of the father leaving and the mother returning, but to cut to the chase, the mother returns, the father having gone off down the street to wait with the kids. By now, it isn't just her meal that isn't going to be paid for, none of the meals are going to be paid for, all 68 euros worth of them.

The mother is told that if she won't pay or attempts to leave without paying, the police will be called. And this is exactly what happens, the mother seemingly surprised that the police are a) called and b) turn up. One of the policeman speaks very good English. He asks the mother about her meal, did she eat it, and so on. She says that she didn't eat all of it, as her son had eaten the dessert. The policeman points out that the dessert was, nevertheless, consumed. He insists that the bill is paid in full without any discount for the pork chop. The mother still refuses, despite actually having the money in her hand.

The policeman then asks for some identification. The mother has none, provoking the policeman to tell her that it is against the law not to. The mother produces an E111 card. "This is not identification," says the policeman but notes down the details anyway (which do include a British National Insurance number, so there is some type of identification). The mother is still refusing to pay, so the policeman tells her that if she doesn't, she will spend a night in the cells and be in court the next day, then remembers that it is a Saturday and so adds that she will spend two nights in the cells. With this threat, the mother finally pays up, and the policeman warns her of the consequences if the police have to be called again to attend to an incident involving her.

The story in itself may not be uncommon. It happens all the time that people, and don't let's just insinuate that it is only the Brits because it isn't, attempt to pull a fast one. But what makes the story altogether more significant is what the mother says as she is leaving, having been made to pay.

When the family first came into the bar, and this was noted not only by one of the owners but also by other diners (some of whom became involved and supported the bar owners), the mother made reference to a certificate for excellence from Trip Advisor that hangs in the bar, by just saying the name of the website. This could have been taken one of two ways, but suspicion was aroused from the outset and indeed Trip Advisor did get mentioned in the exchanges prior to the parting words from the mother, which were: "I'm going to blacken your name on Trip Advisor and get all my friends to do so as well."

What this was all about of course was that there was premeditation. The Trip Advisor commendation inspired the complaint. It was premeditated and in effect a form of blackmail. Not every tourist seeks to exploit Trip Advisor in this way, by knowing that a malicious review, or the threat of one, can be extremely harmful, but some do, as they indeed exploit the internet full stop. The worst thing about this case is that the bar is going to close its account. It cannot afford such malice.

The case exposes the flaw with Trip Advisor but more importantly it exposes the flaw with some people, with some tourists who are dishonest and malevolent. Trip Advisor claims reviews that can be trusted. The problem is that they can't be, because the website has unleashed the worst of human nature that itself cannot be trusted.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Trip Advisor for sale?

Of all the stuff that came out of the ITB travel fair in Berlin, there was perhaps no more significant news than the rumour that Trip Advisor is the target of a takeover by Google. With Google expanding its apps and its offers to the travel industry, there could be legs in the idea.

See more: TNooz

Simply The Best (Beach Destination)

The 25th best beach destination in the world and the only one in Spain to make the top 25. Therefore, the best beach destination in Spain. And the winner is?

Before I tell you, what would you consider are the criteria that amount to the best beach destination? A decent beach is obviously one. But otherwise?

Each to their own. One man's best beach is another man's acres of too much flesh gathered in one place. One man's best beach destination is another man's Blackpool transported to the Mediterranean. Identifying the criteria is a near-impossible task, and given this near impossibility the fallback position is one of hyperbolic, quasi-poetical criteria that conjure up images which may or may not be entirely accurate.

Trip Advisor has been fingered over its reviews. The British Advertising Standards Agency has made it change its system of classification. The agency might also be inclined to have a word with whoever it is who has been consumed by brochure-talkitis. This malady of the mellifluous strikes many in the travel world. And here is an example:

"Velvety white sand stretches along five miles in ..., making it one of the longest beaches in Majorca. Go for a quiet stroll around the quaint beachside fishing village or swim or snorkel in the electric-blue sea. Parts of the beach are a bit breezier, attracting windsurfers and paragliders galore. Interesting shops and ancient Roman ruins add to ...'s allure."

Actually, this doesn't make you want to vomit as much as some brochure talk. But is it entirely representative?

By now, you will probably have realised that the beach destination in question is Puerto Alcúdia; the Roman ruins were a giveaway, even if they aren't strictly speaking in Puerto Alcúdia (unless one includes those buried under the sea that can't be seen). You might have been confused, however, by the "quaint beachside fishing village".

I know Puerto Alcúdia very well. The word "quaint" is not one I would have ever considered to have described any of it. Fishing there is, but the quaintness of the port's fishing village is something that is lost in antiquity.

If this description is perhaps slightly questionable, what about the main photo that accompanies the text on Trip Advisor? I can't be certain, but I suspect that it isn't what most people think of when Puerto Alcúdia beach is mentioned. This is because it looks much like Alcanada, up the coast a tad, a part of Alcúdia certainly, but a very different place to Puerto Alcúdia. At least the sea in the photo looks "electric-blue", if I understand what electric-blue is, and to be honest, I don't.

But why should I worry? Is this not marvellous publicity for Puerto Alcúdia? Absolutely it is. Being voted the best by Trip Advisor for whatever it might be is a tremendous accolade. It is one that should be milked for all it's worth. By the town hall, for example. Will it, though? Probably not.

The trouble with Trip Advisor, however, is that it has been hoist by its own successful petard. It has become a sort of travel bible, dispensing wisdom to a faithful who follow its "word", even if this word is the collective scribing of holidaymaking apostles. Not everyone is, unfortunately, a believer.

Back to Puerto Alcúdia though. There is no doubting the excellence of its beach. It is a beach that has been awarded many a tribute in the past, and rightly so. But even its "five miles" and its, if you insist, "velvety white sand" are not necessarily everyone's criteria of the best. The photo on Trip Advisor might conform to others' criteria. The beach, not that you can actually see a beach, could even be "quaint", and quaintness could well be a criterion for "best". To find it, however, you would need to take more than a "quiet stroll".

And then there is the rest. That which isn't the beach. It is here that the Blackpool thing raises its clichéd head. "Alcúdia is like Blackpool." Ho hum. It's been said many times and it has been said of one part of Puerto Alcúdia. It has even been said on Trip Advisor. The comparison is a false one. Does anyone ever say Blackpool is like Alcúdia? No, I don't think so. And if the comparison can't work this way round, then it can't work the original way. It's not logical, Captain.

But best is best. And Puerto Alcúdia is the best beach destination in Spain. And you know something, I think Trip Advisor might even be right.

Trip Advisor


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Henry The Seventh: Social media success

Do you "like"? Do you "tweet"? Do you tube? Does your business do any or all of these things and, if so, does it really know what it is doing with them?

Social media. Social networks. Once upon a time, social networks were just networks of people, doing what people do, i.e. being social, being friends, being business acquaintances. Whatever the type of network, the purpose is the same: to make contact and connections.

And that's what it's about. "Making connections." The words of Seamus Cullen at No Frills Excursions when I told him I was going to be talking to his business partner, Toni Alenyar, about social media.

No Frills is a small business, but it is a successful one, and one reason why it is successful is that it goes about its business in a purposeful fashion. It plans. And among its plans is one for the use of social media. I have a copy: all fourteen pages of it.

Not every business can devote significant time and resources to social media, but most have come to appreciate that they are, as Toni says, "essential tools". Many businesses have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and the like, but do they really appreciate what they are doing with them?

No Frills is guided by a seven-step strategy. It is one that is partly specific to it as an excursions' operator, but most of the steps can be applied to or adapted by any business. How the company uses social media is geared to meeting one or more of these seven steps. Crucially, they are not the company's, they are the customer's.

From the customer's seeking of holiday inspiration and information to his planning and decision-making, to his taking action (making a booking and travelling) and to his sharing of his experiences, social media accompany each step along the way.

No Frills tests out any social media going. With some it is a case of learning what they offer and which may assume greater importance in the future. But with all its social media activity, there is a wish for the business to be visible, to enhance its reputation and to be seen as innovative.

Of the different networks, the most important to the company are Facebook, You Tube and Trip Advisor. The glowing reviews that No Frills attracts on Trip Advisor come quite obviously as a result of good experiences and good service, but the company actively encourages customers to review what it does, whether good or not so good, and spends time in responding to reviews which are posted.

The sharing of experiences by customers on Trip Advisor is the seventh step in the company's strategic approach, but it can just as easily be seen as the first step. As Toni points out, Trip Advisor is that significant now that a majority of travellers consult it as part of their initial planning.

The attention given to the traveller's information-gathering process is one that has led No Frills to be highly proactive and innovative. For example, it now makes short videos about hotels and posts them on You Tube. Why? Because someone interested in coming on holiday searches for information about specific hotels. No Frills videos give a short tour of the hotel and other relevant information about the resort, and relevance is a keyword in Toni's vocabulary.

But how does this benefit the business? It's not about selling as such. Of course, selling is the outcome that is sought, but it comes back to making connections. Someone sees a video about a hotel, it comes from No Frills, there will be some means of connecting to more No Frills information and the result ... There may be a sale either online or in-resort. Critically though, trust and credibility are being created.

Actually quantifying the benefits of the company's social media activity is nigh on impossible. Toni freely admits this. But then much promotional activity is hard or impossible to quantify. It is hard to place a value on the benefits derived from visibility, reputation and innovation, but social media, used well and planned well, will bring such benefits, and the importance attached to social media by No Frills is reflected by the fact that there is now a full-time member of staff who concentrates on the company's internet presence.

There is way more to the No Frills internet story. I've not mentioned how Google search enquiries have helped to create a whole separate website, I've not mentioned that each of the four No Frills offices (three in Puerto Alcúdia and one in Puerto Pollensa) has its own You Tube channel, and I've not mentioned Henry the elephant. You might guess though that Henry has his own Facebook page.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Enjoy The Trip: Trip Advisor and other websites

Having mentioned Holiday Watchdog yesterday, time today to give Trip Advisor its place in the blog's sun. It is the most important of the holiday (and restaurant) review sites, but it is not - in my opinion (and opinion is what matters) - the best. On the principle that a website should be simple to navigate, Trip Advisor gets my thumbs-down; it's not a patch on Holiday Truths when it comes to user-friendliness and simplicity. But Trip Advisor is on a rather grander scale - it is international, and it has its own director in Spain. He was interviewed yesterday in the "Diario". It is also, or has been, more susceptible to the owner-inspired (written even) glowing review, which was why the British Government legislated against such a carry-on.

Talking to the site's Spanish director is an example of how well the "Diario" does tourism and the business surrounding it, and the most interesting aspect of the interview was - if dealt with only briefly - the revelation that a well-known (unnamed) Mallorcan hotelier considers opinions posted on Trip Advisor to be more important than official categorisation, the number of stars and whatever.

It had been, before I did the Bellevue interview last summer, my impression that no one much in Mallorca took any notice of sites like Trip Advisor. No one much in terms of hotel managements, tourism authorities, town halls and so on. I would still be surprised to learn that the latter two do take any notice, but the hotels are a different matter. Well, Bellevue was, and the then assistant director was. He's no longer there. But Trip Advisor was on his favourites list (or possibly his un-favourites). It was important that it was, given the fire panic of last season.

The drawback with any site such as Trip Advisor, and any forums elsewhere and also Facebook and the rest, is that opinion is just that - opinion. By its nature it is subjective, unscientific; it is also just the tip of a very tall iceberg when it comes to the actual numbers of holidaymakers who ever go on to such sites. Should anyone take any notice therefore? Yes and no. Yes, because opinion can carry a lot of power, despite its subjectivity. No, because this opinion cannot really be challenged (and Trip Advisor has rules as to how hoteliers can respond, as was pointed out to me by the Bellevue assistant director) and because there isn't a "profile" of the person placing the opinion. You might know their sex, their date of birth, their home town, but none of this tells you anything meaningful. This just adds to the unscientific nature of the opinion generation.

Nevertheless, the reviews and comments on sites are being taken seriously, in some quarters, testimony to the power of the internet. It's those quarters that don't take them seriously or just don't even look at them that concern me, which brings us back to the tourism authorities and the town halls. I have said this before, but it bears repetition, and that is that these bodies should be devoting time and resources to monitoring to what is being said on the internet.

Were they to, they might actually learn something. Or be prompted into some course of action. They have a vast market research resource at the click of a mouse, and you doubt that they exploit it. More fool they.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.