An article has been making the rounds about an upstate New York Hotel fining customers $500 for leaving a negative review for their hotel. Here is the original text that sparked the story:
If your guests are looking for a Marriott type hotel they may not like it here. Therefore: If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event
While the hotel now claims that this policy was a joke all along, they are in clear violation of policies set forth by Yelp, TripAdvisor and other travel services, so this is getting them into some hot water.
I genuinely think that the hotel did make a mistake by posting this on their website, and it’s surprising that it was up on the site for years before anyone noticed. Although it looks like their website was last updated in 1998, so I shouldn’t be that surprised. Thankfully the Internet has assured us that the policy would see the light of day.
Two thoughts on the story
While he story speaks for itself, I have two comments on the outcome:
1) When you read the policy more closely, it is telling the guests that they will receive a $500 penalty out of their wedding deposit for any negative reviews, but who writes negative reviews before the wedding anyway? Obviously the bridal party and others have better things to do leading up to their big day. There is a 5% likelihood of this fine ever happening.
2) This is the best marketing and publicity that could ever happen to this hotel! This story has literally put the Union Street Guest House on the map, and I applaud them for it!
Just check out the search results for “Hudson, NY”:
Major faux pas or a brilliant marketing scheme?
This might be the most exciting thing to happen for the city in years. Well played Union Street Guest House.
I’d say “no” to the best publicity for this hotel. It’s been 99.9% negative publicity and they are now buried alive in a 1 star review average on some meaningful sites. The links will stay, the news of this will subside, but the review ratings might take a bit of work!
Here is a great case where personality types come into play. Just like the Yelp reviews themselves, some like the idea (I’m guessing Yelp Haters) and some don’t.
This is the problem as I see it and it isn’t pretty.
It appears there are a bunch of Yelp vigilantes trying to take down this business because they read something about their policies on the Internet. The other sad part is that it may actually work. Being a big fan of Yelp myself I don’t like what these actions are doing to Yelps credibility not to mention the credibility of Yelpers who are going out of their way to bash the hotel.
On another note, I’m not such a big fan of the 5 star averaging review system most sites use. Here is why, think about this for a second. What does this say about the value of the 5 star rating system when a bunch of people who decide they don’t like one aspect of a business can drive its ratings to a point of being detrimental to the business. Going forward, regardless if the person would have loved that hotel their first impression will be it’s a 1 star hotel. While the truth is it could be a 5 star with a terrible policy for wedding parties.
Unfortunately Aaron is absolutely right, people instinctively look at the rating and number of reviews and when a new person sees the page with a ton of 1 star reviews they likely won’t bother to read any of the comments to see what was really going on..