In difficult times like now it can be difficult to keep up the good spirit. So imagine how happy we were when we woke up to a mail from a completely unknown person who offered to help us becoming the best hotel in Lisbon.
His services are of course a joke.
I don’t mean that the services he offers – or sells – are fake. Writing 5 start reviews for hotels is a very profitable business – otherwise Matthew wouldn’t spend time doing what he does.
The ‘joke’ is all the poor travelers who are fooled by them by only using these TripAdvisor, Google and similar platforms star rankings to choose their hotel from.
We use them ourselves. It’s a fast and efficient way to get an overview of the accommodations at your destinations.
But we ALWAYS check out our preferred hotels’ websites for all the information that hotel owners are not allowed to share on their TripAdvisor or Booking Profiles – it’s not US, the hotel owners, who decide what travelers read about our hotel and our services. TripAdvisor, Bookings etc decide the information you read which isn’t what we know our guests find interesting and relevant…. Like recommending our guests NOT to take the Metro from the Airport to Tings which is complete opposite of what Booking does. Because Google Map says we’re only 400 m from the nearest Metro Station Booking recommend people to take the train and walk the rest of the way. But the 400 meter is an almost vertical climb to the top of Lisbon’s highest hill.
We know the hotel sites as travelers and as hotel owners! We have experienced being caught in a fraud arriving to hotels far from what we booked and expected. As hotel professionals we know how the competition forces hotels to shop reviews with Matthew and his colleagues. And they don’t even try to hide it – we have witnessed hotels with Travelers Choice Banners above their entrance on their opening day LOL
And we also know that we always get better prices and/or extra services when we book directly with the hotels – so we always call them.s
I write if because good ratings are not crucial to us.
Of course we get happy and proud when our guests enjoy their stay with us so much that they share their experience to the world.
But we know that Tings is different compared to other hotels. We have created the place we would like to stay in ourselves based on our own experiences from more than 2,500 hotel nights around the world. An inciting oasis for the free individual travelers as we call it.
We never meant to make all travelers on this planet happy and satisfied. We can’t and won’t please everybody.
That’s not possible.
With this attitude we can’t avoid situations where people – who should never have booked a room at Tings – check in, and get ‘disappointed’. We can see it from the horror in their eyes when they realize they have booked a triangular bed.
If possible we help them to book a room somewhere else.
These guests have usually booked with us because of our rankings and without checking the room they booked on our website, or what kind of place Tings is. Because if they had OR if they had called us, it would have been easy for us to find out that they belonged somewhere else and thus avoided the situation.
Instead – to compensate for their own mistakes and frustrations – we end up getting bad reviews, despite all our efforts to avoid these guests who should have stayed somewhere else.
That’s why we know we’ll never reach the top of any list that are based on good ratings alone. Fortunately we have enough reviews to get top rankings on both Google & TripAdvisor.
And our rankings are real and well earned from the only true way to get them: By treating all people nicely – including those who pass through our world without staying with us.
See you soon.
Thomas
REMEMBER: The only reason why Matthew offers his fraud services is because there are enough stupid travelers to motivate doubtful hotel owners to buy them.