Hotel, Travel, and Hospitality professionals… How do you feel about Yelp? Let me know!

With all this bad press, I am starting to become really interested in the hospitality industry’s response to all this?

Yelp definitely effects us… but how?  Are any of you innkeepers, B&B owners, operators, managers, managing groups using yelp, or a paying advertiser on the site??  I would love to hear all your stories… good and bad.

I will start with mine:

You know I am highly skeptical of social media, and I am markedly perturbed at the style of leadership and business management from the people in charge.  But what you don’t know is this:

I am a 1100+ reviewer on yelp.  I had been using it since it’s earlier startup days, and it just sort of became a food blog for me.  There was a momentary ethical crisis when I started working for businesses that exist on yelp, so I pulled back all hotel related reviews or any reviews that may have had a conflict of interest.  I comport myself of the highest ethics on the site.  I am also one of their biggest critics, and have not endeared myself to the site as a content generator.  But I love it, and think it is a fun way for me to relive experiences, and help me remember where I have been.

As for business side of things I can’t say much.  I think it is an invaluable tool to get real time feedback and ideas for improvements on service and the like.  It really has helped the properties I am involved with grow, and I think the bad reviews are better than the good ones.  It is just a new level of comment cards.  Nothing as quantified and rigorous as Market Metrix, but a very good pulse as to the state of the business, and what direction it is heading.

That being said, I think it is odd that I have had pleasant experiences both as a user, as well as a business person (my experiences with the sales agents are PHENOMENAL.  Period.  I like the people and they are solid.  Never one problem)….

But I still don’t trust the concept.  And that is the rub…. why wouldn’t we?  Is that we know too many of the bad reviews?  Is it the way they handle themselves in the public eye?  Do I have some bitter attitude towards them and bone to pick?  I honestly don’t know… as for the latter I highly doubt it.

I think it is that I love the site so much for personal reasons, and it is useful on so many levels for professional reasons, that I get panicked by the management practices (or lack there of).  I just want to see it succeed, and I don’t see any reason to believe it will.

I would love Yelp to look forward and stop focusing on damage control and PR.  They made it so you can’t manage your brand or control the message the same way you used to…. And it is important they become a transparent, openly ethical social media company.  Like the ethicist said, “Whether someone is lying or it is just confusion, yelp has a problem”.

So I want to hear your stories… problems, great stories, etc?  Let us have it!