Having been a journalist for 25 years and specialised in hotel business, Maria Pütz-Willems travelled the world for 16 years as a freelance journalist for leading hotel and tourism publications. Always with a certain feeling for trends and ideas and staying in permanent contact with international dialogue partners. In 2005, she launched the online magazine www.hospitaliyInside.com, a bilingual network for international hotel business.
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Internet Blogging
The internet has set sail towards a new hype: Blogging. In evaluation portals, laymen tell the world what they think. Sometimes joyful and sometimes appalled, they present the crude facts of their hotel stay. During top days, Europe's largest evaluation portal receives more than 1600 postings. That equals 1600 evaluations by laymen, directly leading to a hotel's joy or pain.
Undoubtedly, that's a hot topic: According to a survey by market research company Ipsos carried out among 2.200 internet users in Europe, about a quarter of all users believe in the commentaries concerning products. So the online opinions are powerful. Awfully powerful.
In America, the term is Web 2.0 or, more formal, "consumer generated media", meaning all interactive opinion portals such as blogs, discussion platforms, review websites or social networks. All these terms stand for one single fact: the global and limitless online communication. Or: the manipulation of purchase decisions.
That's exactly what Web 2.0 critics assume that the publication machines, usually lead by internet professionals, marketing experts and media big shots, are. The people commenting on various fields have rarely got the professional background it takes to fully understand the topic. So, are the commentaries that they publish honest or simply honestly manipulated? That is to say, the largest part of the commentaries is negative.
The question mark behind these thoughts is essential - since some of the hotel evaluation portals' "fields of criteria" don't make a lot of sense. Not many providers allow the hotels to take a stand against negative evaluations. On the other hand, some hotel managers just turn the tables, urging guests to systematically post positive commentaries. This way, bloggers can now put their money on how long it takes for "their" criticized hotel to be up top again?
The media's privatization over the last couple of years has catapulted bloggers' opinions into a new dimension. It is not difficult to find brainless journalists who offer a platform to laymen thirsting for importance. And who thereby, for example, generate enormous television ratings. The new evaluation platforms, though, are a bit cleverer: They pretend to prod hotel owners to enhance the quality of their business by means of editorially filtered opinions, simulating a "quality portal? and verifying this claim effective in advertising by means of prizes and rankings. This way, some hotels suddenly advance to the "world's best? while normally, they can only be found in mass catalogues of large tour operators.
The hype is sure to come, but a healthy distance should be maintained: Normally, the "layman's opinion" on the internet is not a problem at all; constructive and self-critical hotel owners will take it as what it is. Nevertheless, travellers and bloggers on the internet should be aware of the fact that commentaries in hotel evaluation portals are simply subjective observations - and on no account a warranty for finding the ideal product corresponding to one's liking. |
