Arthur Frommer: down with casual critics...
...and up with the glorious guidebook!
02.03.2007
So Arthur Frommer (the guy behind Frommer's travel guides) is not a fan of "user-generated" comments. That's the type you see on sites like Trip Advisor and Travellerspoint, comments about hostels, tour agencies, restaurants and what-not else from regular, "casual critics". People like you (unless you are a professional travel writer). We even get those comments on Travellerspoint some times, as users grace our forums with reports of their wonderful/terrible experience at Hotel Wonderful/Terrible. According to Frommer, it all spells trouble (read his articles here and here).
Yes, it's possible for hotels to log in under a fake name and post wonderful reports about themselves or terrible reports about the hotel next door. Easy enough. We should be wary of ploys such as those.
But Frommer's issue with "user-generated" comments goes a little deeper.
They (people who post their comments) have been to London, let's say, once. They have stayed at exactly one hotel. Their stay might have been improved or marred by one incident, one staff member behind the front desk treating them with either courtesy or disdain. Based on such fleeting impressions, and with no experience of other London hotels or of the general standards of the city, our one-time travel writer explodes with either enthusiasm or indignation.
In the forums, I asked people what the they thought of Frommer's opinion. Would you listen to what a first-timer has to say about the hotel she/he stayed at? Or should recommendations be left to the professionals - those travel writing gurus such as Frommer who spend their lives roaming from hostel to hostel and then package it neatly in a guidebook?
