by When I was a child, my family would go on a couple of vacations every year. We would rely on books to tell us which hotels were better than others. Almost as long as there has been a world wide web, there have been web sites waiting for you to tell them how well you think of hotels and other travel related accommodations.
One such web site — one of the best in my experience, really — is Trip Advisor. It features over forty million reviews of hotels, flights, and other vacation related things to do whether they are going to restaurants or enjoying a walk through a park. They even have a fantastic section where they show you comparisons of what brochures show you versus what you get in real life.
One couple on vacation recently found out the hard way that you should probably wait until after your trip is over to review the hotel where you were staying — they were thrown out of their hotel and were not given so much as a refund.
Mr Healey, who was due to check out on September 4, was forced to drive back 280 miles the evening before. He said: “I couldn’t believe it when we were asked to leave.
“We had been there a day when they said we couldn’t get back in our rooms because they were re-carpeting, and we didn’t complain; all we asked was if we could have an extra towel.
“Then, on our second evening, the Manager banged on the door and told us to get out, accusing us of writing a review on Trip Advisor, and said he would call the police.”
There are numerous problems with this. Firstly, the fact that the hotel was snooping around the travel web site trying to find negative articles being written about them. Secondly, that the reaction of the hotel staff was to throw out the guests rather than to try to make things right with them and to help them with their problems, few though they may have been.
Imagine if you are in a restaurant and the waiter overhears you telling your friend that your soup seems a little cold when it is brought to you — and instead of offering to get the soup heated, the waiter gets the bar bouncer to throw you out. That would probably be the last time you’d eat in that restaurant!
We must encourage businesses to thrive and grow when we can but if they do not serve us the way that they should it is fully in our right to write scathing reviews. Don’t throw us out of your hotel rooms — fix the problems we bring to your attention and our reviews will reflect it!
This is such a sad, but hilarious, story! I can’t imagine a dumber mistake for a hotel to make. My Westwood hotel review you linked still lives in infamy 13 years later!
That’s funny, David. I wonder what kind of effect your review has had on their booking rate.
As I understand it, If the hotel is asked about my review, they tell them no more rooms like that exist; then people reserve the room, and find nothing has changed! SMILE!