venerdì 15 novembre 2013
mercoledì 9 ottobre 2013
domenica 6 ottobre 2013
ABOUT TRIP ADVISOR
about trip advisor
As far as we are concerned, trip advisor is a good reference and we did meet many of our new clients becuase of it; they valued more the overall view of the positive comments rather than focusing on few “strange” bad rieviews.
"Get the truth, then go" is the mantra of TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel-review website, which only makes the following all the more alarming.
Log on to its website and type the words "racist" or "racism" into the search engine and you might be surprised by what you find: together they crop up more than 2,300 times in reviews. "Pervert/perverted" features in 353 reviews, "homophobic/homophobia" in 295, "rapist" in 33, and "paedophile" in 10. Often these defamatory terms are used to describe hotel or restaurant staff, b & b owners, waiters and receptionists.
"There is a real risk of getting raped here," wrote one reviewer of a hotel in Munich; "the proprietor … is one of the worst paedophile priests", said another of a guesthouse in Scotland; "the woman that runs this bar is a racist – fact!"
Can we be sure that these reviews really are the "truth"?.
In fact, all that is required to upload these travel "truths" is an anonymous username and email address (which can easily be faked).
"Our policy clearly states that, in addition to profanity, no hate speech, sexually explicit language or graphic reports of violent criminal activity will be tolerated. We are a proponent of free speech and we believe many aspects of a traveller's experiences are valid travel-planning considerations," said a spokesman for TripAdvisor.
Others are less delighted by TripAdvisor's rise. September also marked the month when hundreds of hoteliers and restaurateurs threatened to bring a group legal action against the website. For while good reviews can be the making of hotels, restaurants and b & bs, bad reviews can break them.
Complaints have also been made by hotels that outdated reviews are never removed. The Savoy, which is reopening this month with great fanfare, still has reviews dating back to 2003 that bear no relevance to the experience the hotel offers today. TripAdvisor said that its "Popularity Index" gives more weight to recent reviews and if notified with proof of a new owner, it will make "appropriate changes" to the listing.
The anger of owners has been intensified by the emails TripAdvisor sends to users, media organisations and PR companies, with subject lines such as "Don't go there – hotel horror stories", "Meals from hell" and "The world's dirtiest hotels". Emmins of KwikChex claims these unfairly influence the travelling public. "Adding disparaging and out-of-context comments, overemphasising the reliability of unverified reviews and failing to respond to offers of evidence may make TripAdvisor liable," he said.
In the meantime, the hotel trade is waiting to see whether there will be an explosion of court cases and litigation. Can we trust TripAdvisor? The jury's out.
In any event, as of this month, our work will be awarded by the Gault & Millau restaurant Guide ... non one is on in our village but us. So,we finally have an answer to the many jealousy acts we have been facing so far.
mercoledì 11 settembre 2013
eating out at la grange
Eating out is an expensive business, so we want to make sure our clients feel the characteristics of a good restaurant.
Normally you only notice what good restaurants do so well when you experience the same things going wrong in bad restaurants ..... so far the worse thing that happened to us is not being able to serve more covers!.
We always offer an unhurried social experience, with plenty of time to interact with your dining companions. There’s something about the restaurant setting that encourages relaxed conversation and enjoyment of food and wine.
We are appropriately busy, the tables are spaced far enough apart that you don’t feel you are being eavesdropped in your conversation; the noise level is again quite right due to the limited covers and our music often colours the atmosphere on a quite night.
Service is a key issue, good service is unselfconscious, it’s unfussy and it’s appropriately attentive, staff is not hovering around, anxious to interrupt at the slightest nod, but surely clients do not have to wait long to get another bottle of fizzy water.
As in so many walks of life, timing is everything and we feel that we have a major effect on the success of an evening by getting the timing right... so we are focused just until our good italian expresso is served.
A good restaurant is one where the wine list is imaginative, with a well chosen selection of wines, and where the pricing isn’t too rapacious. Many restaurants buy just from one merchant. As a result, the list has a rather formulaic feel, with a few hits and lots of misses. It’s rare to find a restaurant where much thought and work has gone into the wine list where wines have been carefully sourced from a variety of suppliers; of course much in consideration we take the ski resort we work in ... The glassware also matters: even a humble house wine can taste much more interesting out of proper generous-sized glasses.
Most of all, we would like to tell that we are passionate about food and wine, and our primary goal is excellence, not making a fortune.
Iscriviti a:
Post (Atom)