Hraba Hospitality Consulting

Revelation!  I love it.

I don’t always have stuff hit me, but it hit me today.

So I hadn’t figured out why Tripadvisor’s Restaurant Reviews had recently, so vigorously, taken off.  For those of us in hospitality who are aware of our brands online, it was hard to miss.  It is vital to stay on top of all conversation, reviews, and mentions, and whether through Google Alerts, or a random internet search… you noticed restaurants began to get reviews on Tripadvisor. It’s not really a surprise, and it is a completely natural direction for a travel site like TA.  But, where there wasn’t even an option to review or add (more…)

I think we need to start with a couple presuppositions about social media:

1) It’s the wild west of social media.

2) This isn’t rocket science – it’s about old school customer service.

3) Knee jerk reactionary business owners will always blow things out of proportion, dodge accountability, and blind themselves to what’s really happening to their brand through the eyes of clients. You don’t need social media for that…. it’s been that way for centuries. Of course reviewers shouldn’t be marked as “problem guests” for writing a critical review – that’s poor real-world management of information, and not about the nature of the information itself.  This is a major component of the flawed (more…)

This probably should have been multiple posts. Sorry.

Google PLACES (or where did my Local Business Center shove off to?)

One of my favorite developments in the last few weeks, aside from Google’s experimentation with populating rates of hotels into it’s maps, is Google “Places”.  The blogosphere is abuzz with gentle, quiet speculation on what in the heck is going on (more…)

This is a quick and dirty post, something I seem to be a fan of.

YELP IS INCREASING TRANSPARENCY

They are discontinuing the sponsored business listing “favorite review” feature which confuses the most complex of knuckleheads….. but they are also releasing their incredibly fault algorithm’s hold on hidden reviews. Instead of trying to *HELP* the user by engaging them with relevant, meaningful reviews, they are suspending the algorithm’s effort in (more…)

I imagine this is one of the first mash ups of a live-twittered conference?  If not the first, one of the only ones because this was massively, overly, insanely, time-consuming.  I do think what came of it was worthwhile, and I hope this sort of serves as a testament to all we spoke about and considered during Eye for Travel SM SF 2010.  First thing: I am not going to list contributor names here – I assume this is mostly for those who (more…)

Just a quick and dirty post for some of the better articles, pages, and thoughts from the Eye for Travel conference.

I appended this so that it includes both my tweeted links, and almost every single relevant tweeted link from the conference.  If I missing anything, don’t hesitate to let me know!  I think this is important stuff that all begs the greater conversation of social media, where it’s heading, and what we know (or think we know).  For one, I think the take away commentary is something Mr. Jameson said – “The entire landscape of the internet will be different in 5 years”. I think it’s important to recognize…. and the fact is that everything we are using is nothing more than a tool, and tools (more…)

Another Class Action Lawsuit for Yelp!

Enjoy the TechCrunch article… and always, always, always enjoy the commentary.  I find it interesting if not hilarious.  If it isn’t hilarious enough for you, check out the comment section of this blog post, where it basically proves Facebook users are clueless (or 4chan had a blast acting like a mischievous army, once again).

Yelp seems to be taking this situation seriously though; umm….enough to post a Craigslist ad for legal counsel.  I would imagine there are better ways to hire lawyers than CL, but hey, just says a lot about the management that got them into this mess.

But these cries of extortion… once again… are more about (more…)

I just found this.  1) Don’t know if it’s useful, but it’s interesting, 2) I am sure you guys can leverage this in some way, 3) I don’t know if this is supposed to be visible or not… so (more…)

The rest that is cut off (hey I am a hotel guy, not a HTML guy) says “($42/month), would you?”  You can take the survey yourself right here: TripAdvisor Survey for Owners.

I will let the pic speak for itself.  I know it’s just a survey, but I assume some (more…)

Once again, I got carried away with a response to a blog post, and decided to expound on it.  I am sure this counts as real business right?

Newsweek’s Budget Travel has a great article about TripAdvisor trying to deal with the long coming revelation that many of their users and reviews are not legitimate.  This is, frankly, a huge blow to the site, and should pose a happy problem in it’s early adolescence as they deal with all the changes that come along with growing into adulthood.  Frankly, I am thrilled that this may provoke User Generated Content sites to seek the same verification model other sites have.

At any rate, this is vital to all of us, and it recalls some of my previous post (which I seem to mention once or twice):

You know I am skeptical of social media, whether speaking of Facebook’s lack of meaningful interaction, or Flickr’s nebulous TOS.  In general, I have had major concerns since my yelp research project, and resulting thoughts on ethics in social media. I had even mentioned in January that Yelp should consider verification processes.

One scotch fueled evening my jocular side protruded a wee bit and I became a prankster. To be honest it wasn’t to learn the lesson I did, rather just good fun.  I speak of the Ryan Air Twitter spoof of mine, which got considerable attention in traditional media (namely because Ryan Air claimed @ryanaironline was their account).  It  helped me realize that there is a grave concern for brands and trademarks, and both (more…)