Last July I posted an article entitled, “Are All Hotel Marketers Liars?”  It talked about the launch of a new and different hotel review site called Oyster.com.

The article outlined numerous reasons why Oyster.com would not “fundamentally change the way people make hotel decisions,” as the site’s founder claimed.  Basically it had a failed business plan.  Imagine hiring 10 “professional” reviewers to travel throughout the country, stay in (and pay for!) each hotel night.

I mean, what were these guys thinking.  It was like a time warp to the Internet Bubble Hay Days when business plans were written on the backs of cocktail napkins and investors threw millions at boy wonders.

How could they possibly afford to pay salary and travel costs for reviews when TripAdvisor gets millions of reviews for free?

Well Oyster.com hasn’t gone out of business…at least not yet.  But Gawker recently reported Oyster is going through a major consolidation and firing  a good portion of its staff.

As a hospitality marketing professional it may be a good time to update your TripAdvisor Strategy.

What do you think the chances are Oyster will be with us in 2010?

Safe Travels – Madigan Pratt

As a hospitality marketing professional you and I both know we’re not.  But even Seth Godin would be hard pressed to think otherwise after reading the press releases for the new, over-hyped online hotel review site Oyster.com.

Essentially, Oyster.com is a hotel review site that sends professionals to stay at and review individual hotels.  Purported to have been in stealth mode for the past year or so, the site has gone public with a limited number of reviews covering hotels in New York, Miami, Jamaica, Aruba and the Dominican Republic.

To generate publicity CEO and founder Elie Seidman is taking on the 800 pound gorilla – TripAdvisor and the people who market the hotels his web site reviews.

Seidman is quoted as saying -

“There are tremendous differences between what our reporters bring back and the marketing distortions of the hotel industry.”

Did he just call us liars?

But wait, it gets better.  Mr. Seidman goes on to say, “The vast majority of hotel descriptions and photos circulating on the Internet originates in the hotel’s own marketing departments and gets reproduced over and over as legitimate truth–but it’s often misleading.”

Armed with 10 professional reviewers who travel essentially full time and go to 60 to 70 hotels a year it looks like Oyster.com will post 600 to 700 new reviews a year.  Based on those numbers it’s hard to imagine this new site will “fundamentally change the way people make hotel decisions” as he claims.

Let’s face it – it’s not going to happen.  Simply put Oyster.com is just another traditional travel guide like AAA or Mobil that will soon carry outdated information based on one person’s opinion of one encounter with a hotel.  But if Mr. Seidman was being truthful and said as much in his press releases he wouldn’t be getting nearly as much press coverage now would he?  Could this be a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

If content is king then Oyster.com is not going to replace TripAdvisor or fundamentally change the way people make hotel decisions. While some like to complain about TripAdvisor, let’s face it – people use it, believe it and book millions of room nights based on its reviews.

Give your guests credit.  They check a variety of sources and read multiple reviews (not just one) to formulate their opinions.  And I’ll bet they would write a pretty accurate and truthful review of your hotel if you asked them to.

In the meantime, after reviewing the Oyster.com site I came away underwhelmed.  A flash-in-the-pan perhaps?

Check it out and let me know what you think.  Safe travels – Madigan Pratt

For other comments on Oyster.com check out:

1. Arthur Frommer
2. BusinessWeek

If you are a regular reader of HospitalityMarketingBlog.com you know I’m a raving fan of TripAdvisor.  With over 20 million reviews there’s hardly any guest who enters the door of a luxury hotel who hasn’t first read about the property on TripAdvisor.

The TripAdvisor Home Page proudly boasts, “more than 15,000,000 travelers from 190 countries planned trips here this week.” An astonishing statement.  Adding weight to this is word-of-mouth impact.  Research shows consumers believe reviews read online almost as much as they do personal recommendations from friends and relatives.

While many hospitality marketing professionals and travel agents don’t care for TripAdvisor (how’s that for PC?), our clients embrace it.  Through a series of proactive, custom-tailored strategies each hotel actively manages TripAdvisor and encourages guests to post reviews.  We treasure every TripAdvisor review – especially those with 5-Stars (or 5-Owls as TA refers to them).

But here’s what gets my goat.  And the only reason I’m bringing it up is it’s happened a couple of times now.

A guest writes an absolutely glowing review of a property and rates everything 5-Stars – Service, Value, Location, etc.  But in posting the review at the end they make an obvious mistake and rate the hotel as 1-Star.  The first time this happened customer support was contacted and asked to simply correct the guest’s mistake and change it to 5-Stars which was obviously what the guest intended.

Instead of making the change, a few days later the review disappeared!

This happened again recently for another hotel.  Instead of contacting customer support an email was sent to management. It explained the situation as well as what had happened previously and asked them to please make the correction to 5-Stars.  A couple of days later the review disappeared!

When I post a golf score that’s well outside my normal range (usually higher) the computer informs me it looks like a mistake and asks me if I want to change it.  With all their technological prowess, you’d think a similar fix would be simple for TripAdvisor.

Then I could rave about TripAdvisor all the time.

What do you think?  Safe travels – Madigan Pratt

 Related Blog Posts about TripAdvsor:

• Nowhere to Hide 
• TripAdvisor Reaches 20 Million Reviews
• Where’s Your TripAdvisor Strategy
• How Important is Word-of-Mouth Advertising