Be careful with the reviews!
Please spend a few minutes reading this - its important to you and to us
Of course we like good reviews - and of course we don't like if our guests didn't enjoy their stay - and if their complain is relevant we changes things immediately.
But we don't think about them and we don't please people to avoid bad reviews. We do the best we can and that's it.
And we use them ourselves when we plan our own travels. BUT only as a supplement to our common sense as well.
Tripadvisor, Google, The Fork and all the other places where people recommends services are packed with wrong and fake information AND so easy to manipulate that we find most of the reviews useless.
Its only among the bad reviews we find relevant and useful information that make us book a room 🙂
But we don't think about them and we don't please people to avoid bad reviews. We do the best we can and that's it.
And we use them ourselves when we plan our own travels. BUT only as a supplement to our common sense as well.
Tripadvisor, Google, The Fork and all the other places where people recommends services are packed with wrong and fake information AND so easy to manipulate that we find most of the reviews useless.
Its only among the bad reviews we find relevant and useful information that make us book a room 🙂
Be careful with the reviews!
There is nothing wrong with all the reviews you find everywhere.
Just don’t be too naive. Use the information together with your common sense. And if you haven’t seen the video below – do it now. Its hilarious!
So think about the following 4 critical issues next time you plan your travel:
#1 - Do you know if the hotel next door is better than yours?
We don’t know how many hotels we have stayed in. But a lot – and enough to compare and claim that Tings Lisbon is the best One Star hotel in Graça (if not in Lisbon).
Not many travelers have the same Hotel-In-Lisbon experience and can’t really compare.
But they can review their experience with the hotel they stayed in which is relevant and interesting for others to read. It just doesn’t tell whether the hotel they stayed in is better or worse than other hotels in Lisbon.
#2 - A lot of the reviews you read are fake!
Specialists claims that up to one third of the reviews on Tripadvisor are fake. We don’t know if this is true or not – BUT its very easy to make fake reviews – there are ‘companies’ specialised in ‘helping’ restaurants and hotels to get good reviews
In Kathmandu where Tings Kathmandu has been operating for almost 10 years we often find hotels that opens with a Tripadvisor Travellers Choice Award from day one LOL So as a rule of thumb: Don’t trust everything you read.
The most important information you get from the negative reviews – what the guests didn’t like, and how did the owners reply. Very often the bad reviews are the reason why we choose a hotel. Other travelers do the same: So good that you throw those people – a guest mailed us after having read our answer to a very bad review we got from guests that we so drunk that we had to call the Police and throw them out in the middle of the night to avoid problems with the family with two kids in the room next door.
Our explanation to the bad review made her choose to stay with us.
#3 - Negative reviews may be from a guests who didn't get a discount
Believe it or not – BUT a lot of guests thread hotels and restaurants with negative reviews if they don’t get discount or if the check out before time without getting refunds.
When we opened Tings Lisbon we were harassed by a guy who applied for a job at Tings, but didn’t get it. Instead he convinced his friends to harres us with negative reviews which can be fatal when you are starting up.
Since you can’t get hold of human beings at Google and other platforms it’s almost impossible to remove them (Tripadvisor removed them – Google hasn’t)
#4 - You can pay to get better 'services'
You can ‘buy’ better positions on the different OTAs who give priority to hotels that pays for their services.
We do not buy Tripadvisors Business Package which means that we don’t have our website listed, we can’t upload videos – and we get listed in travelers’ searches after the hotels that pays Premium Fee to Tripadvisor.
We use Tripadvisor, Booking.com etc ourselves
The Online Travel Agencies (or OTAs) like Tripadvisor, Hotel.com, booking.com etc. are fantastic tools to get an idea about what’s available at your destination. We use them all the time ourselves.
BUT we don’t book through them.
We always go to the hotels own website and/or blog and book directly from the site or by mail or phone, like we did before the web.
Communicating directly with the people at the hotel, always gives you an idea about what to expect.
And we always get better deals, or something that suits our purpose better.
So don’t hesitate to call us.
Annette & Thomas
