[Longinthetooth]

Has anyone else noticed that Trip Advisor (a law unto itself) is now stuffing B&Bs etc,. into the nearest village, hamlet, area with a just a dog and a village pump etc., instead of the towns they rely on/in post code even, for their "guests" to find a general spread of B&Bs.

Our town has a couple of attractions but it is a small town. Many B&Bs are in out of the way hamlets near enough and near by. Trip has just randomly put us out in these unbeknown hamlets!

Its very annoying as if you were a visitor searching for the "town" you want to stay in then only a couple "in the town itself" B&Bs show up and the rest of us are no where to be found as visitors would not know the names of the local hamlets to search!!!

Can't get hold of Trip Advisor. If you try to change your location that put you back to where THEY want you to be.

Anyone else been moved and annoyed?

[hazelsfarm]

Originally Posted by Longinthetooth

Has anyone else noticed that Trip Advisor (a law unto itself) is now stuffing B&Bs etc,. into the nearest village, hamlet, area with a just a dog and a village pump etc., instead of the towns they rely on/in post code even, for their "guests" to find a general spread of B&Bs.

Our town has a couple of attractions but it is a small town. Many B&Bs are in out of the way hamlets near enough and near by. Trip has just randomly put us out in these unbeknown hamlets!

Its very annoying as if you were a visitor searching for the "town" you want to stay in then only a couple "in the town itself" B&Bs show up and the rest of us are no where to be found as visitors would not know the names of the local hamlets to search!!!

Can't get hold of Trip Advisor. If you try to change your location that put you back to where THEY want you to be.

Anyone else been moved and annoyed?

Hi
Yes we have the same problem, we are in a small area of Chester called Woodbank, a few houses and a pub, if you blink you have missed us, but trip advisor wont list us under Chester. Therfore no one will ever find us from there website, as no one wood specificaly type Woodbank. We only therfore take there free listing, as we would get no benefit from paying them. There loss.

[Roger Maher]

Originally Posted by hazelsfarm

Hi
Yes we have the same problem, we are in a small area of Chester called Woodbank, a few houses and a pub, if you blink you have missed us, but trip advisor wont list us under Chester. Therfore no one will ever find us from there website, as no one wood specificaly type Woodbank. We only therfore take there free listing, as we would get no benefit from paying them. There loss.

We are also suffering with our listing under Holiday Rentals on Trip Advisor. We took out a listing with Holiday Lettings (owned by the same company as Trip Advisor) for one of our cottages and paid for a premium listing to feature under Trip Advisor as well. Five weeks ago we discovered that Helsby, which is a part of the post town of Frodsham, and only 2 miles away does not feature if you search for Frodsham. We are the only provider of self catering cottages within an 8 mile radius of Frodsham and yet our property is not listed. However, 42 of our competitors properties within a 14 mile radius reaching as far as the other side of Chester are there for all to see.

I am in dispute with Holiday Lettings over this as our contract is with them and they keep telling me to contact Trip Advisor but as I cannot ring anybody I don't see why it should be down to me. They do not seem to understand that it is very unlikely people are going to search for Helsby and far more likely that people will search for Frodsham. For a website that is geared towards consumer reviews I would have to say that if I were able to post a public review on Trip Advisor as to how this problem is being dealt with it would rate as poor as meanwhile we keep losing out on enquiries and potential bookings. I would be interested to know other people's thoughts on this.

[Windy]

I'm not sure how much you should worry about where they list you. It might not make that much difference :-)

I just had a 2 month trial for £1.20 on a premium listing with HL which meant I also got a listing on Flipkey. My ad was viewed less than 20 times in 2 months. (I get that many unique visitors to my own web site in 2 days). I got about 10 enquiries from the two sites combined. I answered them all within 2 hours but not one bothered to respond so I had 0% conversion rate. Over the same 2 month period I took over £10k of bookings for the property listed with them from my own website. The weblink they give you has a rel=nofollow tag so it doesn't even have any SEO value.

It seems to me that listing sites are starting to become the victims of their own success. They are asking crazy money and delivering very very little value.

So where do we spend our marketing pounds now that this channel seems to be saturated?