by Georges Panayotis
Each week brings a new survey by a travel or tourism expert that reveals the Top 10 most popular destinations, the most visited cities, the most stayed at hotels to the good consumer public, without really letting it be known just who decided this ranking. Generally realized based on the hits received by an online site that wants some free publicity, these famous “surveys” have nothing scientific nor very deontological about them.
The Age of Internet, with its ability to connect millions of people very rapidly, generated new practices that only pervert market analysis under the guise of offering objective information. With a little imagination, it is possible to multiply the fanciful lists and find an angle that is sufficiently attractive to be borrowed in a few sentences, in a newsletter, a free daily or a news-streaming channel … all media that need a continuous feed.
And this is how truth is stretched to the point of caricature, just to make a buzz. TripAdvisor has been caught in the act several times, placing, for example, a British shelter for the homeless at the top of its properties with the best scores. And what about other preposterous listings such as the 100 dirtiest hotels worldwide, that make no mention of improvements made, doing serious harm to operators that invested in a renovation that took place unnoticed. Internet comments opened a Pandora’s box that encourages curious litigations. The denigration of the competitor is done more actively than the quest for operational efficiency. Bitterness about others’ success is expressed all too readily when it would be better to improve one’s own mediocrity.
The final goal is not just to inform, but to drive more traffic to the site that is intended to share consumer opinions, and feed the booking engine that is behind each property that has been “reviewed”. The division of activities has exploded. Information is blended with the reservation, and business has long since replaced the apparent will to valorize real experiences. The most worrisome is that most hotel groups have accepted to join forces, giving way to the globalized power of social websites. They believe they have mastered the perverse effects by associating external comments with their own reservation sites and their own evaluation system.
Blending genres has never been a good idea. For a long time the same phenomenon could be observed in the fields of the accounting audit, market analysis and strategic consulting. The Brussels Commission can try all it likes to regularly denounce the absence of deontological barriers among the Big Four, nothing seems to impress these companies. Scandals have multiplied since the discovery of conflicts of interest, biased information, accounts certified too quickly … How can these accounting experts, as brillant as they may be, provide strategic counseling ? Not only is the legal obligation of partitioning transgressed, but they weaken the very companies they were supposed to help. But that only upsets a few disillusioned executives of the European Union. The battle seems too unfair and the risks too great.
The multiplication of national subsidiaries and the persistence of opaque ties continue to masque the bans on double- and triple-play. It is necessary to continue to denounce all those who are happy to be judges and parties, who influence consumers and corporate managers’ choices by manipulating information or benefiting from dominant positions. This is all the more important since hoteliers could find themselves in a difficult position – like the condemned yogurt manufacturers – for having participated in a kind of agreement to the detriment of the consumer. The good news of the New Economy is that what is moral always wins, even if one must wait for David’s catapult to win over Goliath’s bludgeon.
