Our Response
"I almost find myself lost for words as I read your “review” if I’m honest. These are some of the strangest comments I’ve read on Trip Advisor, in fact it shows that people can pretty much post whatever they like and it appears on here regardless of how little sense it makes! I gladly welcome feedback and reviews from guests who offer genuine information that is constructive and helpful to others. We try to react and respond to these in a normal and professional manner that again, hopefully helps guests get an understanding of a situation or experience. In this case I’ll respond to your comments in the only way I think is possible. So let’s look at the points you make in your interesting review......Click Here to see the full response
The new rollercoaster ride that is “Trip Advisor “
Where do I start with this one? I’m writing this blog in order to give you all an idea of just how crazy things can go from time to time!
I have a feeling a lot of you reading this will already know about the story behind it. It all started with a review posted on the famous Trip Advisor website. I read the review titled “Beech Hill Hotel Lake View?” one morning in the office, I sat back and the first thing I did was laugh! I mean was this for real? How had this review which quite honestly is unbelievable, made it to their site? The answer was, of course it had!
I thought about it for a while, chatted about it to colleagues and pondered on my response..... I decided to respond to the comments in the only way I felt possible, I answered each of the points the “guest” had raised and hit the “submit” button. My response was different to say the least, but I felt it was appropriate and wanted it to show just how ridiculous and sometimes just untrue reviews can be, yet still appear online.
So, my response was posted a day later and I didn’t really think much more about it. Then on the day it was published one or two people at work mentioned they’d read it, and so too had some of their friends and family, “everyone loved it” they all said! We had a bit of a laugh in the office and joked again at how crazy it was that someone could write such a bizarre review and Trip Advisor simply post it?! Anyway, that was just the beginning......
Within a few hours someone I knew had read it and posted it on Facebook, again he couldn’t believe what he was reading, and loved our response more than the review itself! From there it went viral, literally thousands of people saw it and were sharing and commenting on it. I was receiving emails from other hotel managers saying “well done!” and how refreshing it was to read my comments, they found them amusing but at the same time, they totally agreed it showed just how floored Trip Advisor is as a platform. This proved that almost anything gets posted, regardless of the facts, or lack of them! Then the emails started from around the world, I kid you not, even as far as New Zealand! The really nice thing was how positive and upbeat people were about the whole story.
I was now on the Trip Advisor “rollercoaster” ride! My phone literally didn’t stop ringing, newspapers, radio and then television!! First of all I had a live radio interview on radio Cumbria’s breakfast show, this was followed by several telephone interviews. Then I got a call from the BBC, they wanted to run the story on their news programme, Northwest Tonight! By now I was starting to think what is going on? I’m all over the internet, we were about to feature all over the national press, and now I’m going on the news?! I wondered if now was a good time to start practising my signature?!
The news team arrived, we discussed the story and how it would roll out on that evening’s broadcast. I was delighted that finally it gave us the chance to get this story out to the wider public. It wasn’t just about the crazy review and my somewhat comical response anymore; it was about the bigger picture. It was about how Trip Advisor simply doesn’t work, it can’t work. This is one of the best examples of how open this site is to abuse and how damaging that abuse can be to a business. None of the comments within this “review” are useful or helpful in anyway, and in fact seem to be more about weather and the Lake than the hotel, we were rated one out of five for location??!!
In fact Chris Evans summed it up best on 26 November 2015 while referring to this trip advisor review on his breakfast show by saying “ you can’t criticise a lake” “a Lake is a Lake” “a Lake scores ten out of ten all the time for being a lake”
Incidentally Chris also said of the hotel “The whole hotel has been there for ages. I’ve stayed in this hotel, it’s a gorgeous hotel it’s perfectly perched above the lake to give great views” great endorsement thanks Chris
Click here to hear Chris commenting on this Trip Advisor review
I really hope now that the issue has been raised again something is done to bring Trip Advisor in line with other websites such as Laterooms.com or Booking.com where guests must have stayed at the hotel they are voicing opinions about.
Moreover Trip Advisor do have an effective system in place currently for Holiday Rentals where by they email the cottage owner to say a review has been left and by who but not the detail of the review so that the cottage owner can confirm or otherwise whether that individual has actually stayed. And if the cottage owner states that this reviewer had not stayed, trip advisor go back to the reviewer for further evidence of their stay. So why can they not roll that system out to the hotel side of their business?
Interestingly enough, after Trip Advisor were contacted by the BBC for a statement, the review and my response were removed from their site, the reason given “we re-examined the review and didn’t believe it to be genuine” funny that!
Jonathan Allan
General Manager
Beech Hill Hotel