Out of 16 reviews of the staff, 16 said they were kind and polite 11 guests reviewed the hotel's location, 11 said it was conveniently located Six guests mentioned the room cleanliness in a review, six felt they were very clean We found four reviews that recommend eating at the restaurant, only one said to avoid it Out of six reviews of the beds, five said they were comfortable Two guests reviewed the bar, two felt it had a great atmosphere and selection
Peter Jeffries • It seems to me that the bush is leading the charge in the area of free wifi! I also think the industry could learn from their country counterparts in the art of friendliness.
24 days ago Voted for Late check-out
Jan Dickens • Free WiFi should be available but I don't think Australia has the capacity to provide this. Hotel bookings should be for at least 22 hrs - this would enable the hotel to have 2 hours cleaning time and still keep their occupancy rates.
27 days ago | Voted for Wireless internet
Lee Oliveira • Australia is way behind when it comes to free wifi in hotels. Every hotel should at least have free wifi in the lobby. They would need to upgrade their system if a hotel was going to offer free wifi. Some hotels I've stayed at that offer free wifi are extremely slow because of the amount of people using it.
about 1 month ago
Phillip Fitzgibbon • wifi should be free in Hotels, if you ask nicely you can usually get late check out free anyway
about 1 month ago | Voted for Wireless internet
Makoto "Mak" Arai • Free WiFi for sure - Just imagine when you have to sign in and even agree to pay for such basic infrastructure, first thing at hotel after hours of tiresome flight(s)...
about 1 month ago | Voted for Wireless internet
James Rennie • Absolutely free WiFi. You have already paid a premimum to stay there so why not offer something that is free in other parts of the world
about 1 month ago | Voted for Wireless internet
Mathew Thompson • I have recently returned from a Western USA road trip. I found it interesting that of the five hotels I stayed in, it was the "mum and dad" operators to provide free WiiFi and it was the major national chains who failed to deliver. Unless corporate's refuse to book group travel with hotels failing to step into the 21st century, they won't change their ways, vote with your feet people!
about 1 month ago | Voted for Wireless internet
Carmel Hutt • I would like Free WiFI and late a Late Check Out
Ella Conway • honestly, I think Wifi and Late check outs should be at no extra charge at all.
No sooner had Expedia shed TripAdvisor in a public offering than it launched an online feature that certifies some user reviews of hotels as having been “verified.”
Known as Expedia Verified Reviews, the feature is a clear attempt to counter skepticism about the veracity of user reviews on sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp.
To qualify as a verified review, the writer must be a traveler who booked reservations through Expedia, and the stay must be authenticated by the OTA.
The verified-reviews feature has already launched in much of Western Europe and Asia. John Kim, senior vice president of global products at Expedia, said the company would roll it out in the U.S. and the rest of Western Europe this month.
“The innovation we are launching is a more relevant way to target reviews,” Kim said. He added that Expedia authenticates reviews by checking the writer’s booking history on Expedia and verifying a non-cancelled reservation at a hotel.
“We have introduced an ability for reviewers to target reviews based on interests,” Kim said.
By launching the feature, Expedia, which was overtaken last year by Priceline.com as the largest U.S. online travel agency as measured by revenue, appears to be addressing a hot-button issue: skepticism about whether user reviews are legitimate.
The number of monthly visitors to travel-review sites, online travel agencies’ review pages and travel blogs jumped 35% between 2008 and 2010, research firm PhoCusWright reported earlier this year. Such growth has fueled suspicions about whether some positive reviews are being written by the hotels themselves or some negative reviews are being authored by competitors.
“They’re recognizing that there’s a concern of accuracy and legitimacy of reviews online,” said Henry Harteveldt, an industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group.
He cited a recent research document by his company reporting that more than half of U.S. leisure hotel guests “expressed some concern” about the credibility of online travel reviews.
Such growing concerns about the legitimacy of reviews are best typified by the recent prospectus for TripAdvisor, the spun-off division of Expedia that was founded in 2000 and began trading Dec. 20 as an independent public company on the Nasdaq exchange.
Before Expedia spun off TripAdvisor, it warned potential TripAdvisor investors of possible liabilities in the form of legal claims stemming from user reviews.
The 184-page prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in July warned that TripAdvisor could be subject to legal expenses related to claims ranging from defamation and libel to negligence.
Additionally, this summer TripAdvisor, in what may or may not have been a nod to such concerns, changed the slogan on its hotel-review pages. While TripAdvisor’s home page says “Find Hotels Travelers Trust,” the wording was changed on individual hotel pages to “Reviews from our community.”
At the time, TripAdvisor called the wording change “part of our ever-evolving communication efforts, this time highlighting our commitment to our all-important community.” It did not acknowledge any concerns about hotel grievances.
Harteveldt said the launch of Expedia’s new feature on the heels of the TripAdvisor spinoff was no accident, given that both companies are competing for page views from travelers. Expedia hosts about 6.5 million user reviews, compared with more than 50 million on TripAdvisor.
Kim declined to specifically address whether the timing coincided with the TripAdvisor spinoff, saying only that the company was “trying to satiate consumer demand with its own unique approach.
Travel review site TripAdvisor will launch on the Nasdaq stock exchange today with an expected value of around $4bn. TripAdvisor shares, being traded under the name TRIP, will go on sale at 09:00hrs in New York.
The company, which has websites in 30 countries, is being spun off by parent Expedia.
Expedia has been the largest buyer of advertising on the TripAdvisor website, accounting for as much as 35% of its total revenue, according to a report in today's Financial Times. However, the company expects to attract more business from Expedia's rivals following the sale.
After the spin-off, Expedia will no longer have any ownership interest in TripAdvisor.
By Linsey McNeill
(Source: Travelmole.com - http://www.travelmole.com/news_feature.php?news_id=1150777 )
TripAdvisor makes Nasdaq debut
By Johanna Jainchill
TripAdvisor began trading as an independent public company on Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol TRIP, following the completion of its spin-off from Expedia Inc.
To mark the occasion, TripAdvisor co-founder and CEO Stephen Kaufer visited Nasdaq’s headquarters in New York City's Times Square to ring the opening bell.
“This is a truly exciting time for TripAdvisor, and we are eager to continue to innovate on behalf of our users and grow the business as we enter this next chapter,” Kaufer stated on TripAdvisor's blog.
At 11:24 a.m. Eastern, TripAdvisor shares were down about 5.5%, trading at $28.55.
(Source: Travelweekly.com - http://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Travel-Technology/TripAdvisor-makes-Nasdaq-debut/ )
TripAdvisor Goes on Sale Today
The ability to generate faux user generated content at will, with the appearance of having it originate from disparate sources and locales, is difficult to stifle. By nature, FROs are exceptionally good at hiding and one can assume that contingencies have been planned in the event of satellite operations being compromised.
Conventional methods to track FROs like blacklisting reviews originating from common IP address, a technique borrowed from email anti-spam filters, are too simplistic, catching only those least likely to have the ability to launch large scale campaigns capable of materially impacting a hotel’s online reputation.
Circumstantial evidence such as ratios for reviews to the number of occupied rooms or the ratio of frequent reviewers to anonymous reviewers may hint at atypical levels of guest engagement. Additionally, flurries of positive reviews following posting of a negative review may appear unnatural.
Jumping to the conclusion that such flags are evidence of malfeasance is inadvisable. They may indicate a hotel is doing an excellent job of legitimately engaging its community of guests. Or, it just may be a coincidence.
Without being able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the review source was illegitimate, protests are likely to fall on deaf ears when brought to the attention of the review site or authorities.
Researchers at Cornell University claim to have developed algorithms that isolate fake reviews based on sentence structure and word utilization. While the research methodology identified certain patterns, the sources of the fake reviews were not professional FROs determined to blend in with the crowd.
How to combat Fake Review Optimization on travel Sites
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