Traveller's reviews: should you rely on them?
June 16th 2010 01:06
Category: No Category
With only four weeks to go to my wedding, I thought I'd start getting something organised. I am what you can call a slightly lazy bride, and the reason we have decided to have a south pacific island resort wedding is so that both of us won't have to do much of the planning and organising.
We have booked to stay and wed at Iririki Resort in Vanuatu. During my travel agent days I know a few clients have loved it there, and I don't think at the time I have heard anything bad about the resort. I was fairly confident that I had made the right choice.
So I hopped online to have a look what else I can do around Vanuatu (besides getting married of course, we still need to somehow entertain ourselves every other day!) and randomly came across some 'complaint' letters about Iririki.
The title of the letter / forum shouted in loud bold letters: DON'T GO THERE! and the contents goes on about this couple on their honeymoon never received the goods/services they paid for, was left in a room with mould with unfriendly staff and was given really bad service.
Interesting, I thought to myself. Noted that the date on this letter was back in 2006, I thought I'd go in search for more recent customer reviews and see what the rest says.
The obvious first choice was to jump onto Tripadvisor and check out the latest reviews. As expected, the first three reviews (written earlier this month) were of striking contrasts already. One said it was the best hotel ever, the other warned of mouldy bathrooms (again, at least there is consistency) and average food, and the next one took a more diplomatic tone of "it was comfortable and friendly".
Then I jumped onto Yahoo travel, there were only two reviews and written in 2007 and 2006 (around the same time as that very strongly disappointed letter) and both praised the resort for a wonderful stay.
It really gets my heart jumping up and down and all over the place. In a way, I am glad it's not uniformly bad, but it does get me thinking - what happens if those bad reviews are right?
How much do you rely on traveller reviews? I generally hardly look at them unless I happen to come across one while searching for other information, but should I start reading them perhaps?
We have booked to stay and wed at Iririki Resort in Vanuatu. During my travel agent days I know a few clients have loved it there, and I don't think at the time I have heard anything bad about the resort. I was fairly confident that I had made the right choice.
So I hopped online to have a look what else I can do around Vanuatu (besides getting married of course, we still need to somehow entertain ourselves every other day!) and randomly came across some 'complaint' letters about Iririki.
The title of the letter / forum shouted in loud bold letters: DON'T GO THERE! and the contents goes on about this couple on their honeymoon never received the goods/services they paid for, was left in a room with mould with unfriendly staff and was given really bad service.
Interesting, I thought to myself. Noted that the date on this letter was back in 2006, I thought I'd go in search for more recent customer reviews and see what the rest says.
The obvious first choice was to jump onto Tripadvisor and check out the latest reviews. As expected, the first three reviews (written earlier this month) were of striking contrasts already. One said it was the best hotel ever, the other warned of mouldy bathrooms (again, at least there is consistency) and average food, and the next one took a more diplomatic tone of "it was comfortable and friendly".
Then I jumped onto Yahoo travel, there were only two reviews and written in 2007 and 2006 (around the same time as that very strongly disappointed letter) and both praised the resort for a wonderful stay.
It really gets my heart jumping up and down and all over the place. In a way, I am glad it's not uniformly bad, but it does get me thinking - what happens if those bad reviews are right?
How much do you rely on traveller reviews? I generally hardly look at them unless I happen to come across one while searching for other information, but should I start reading them perhaps?
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