Question about New Guidelines

[suziehmkr]

Laura,

I have a question about your new guidelines about touting tour operators services, etc.

 

I have learned an IMMENSE amount of information about every port we have visited due to these boards. Does your new guideline mean that we can't post reviews of our ports of call when we return, which would include the operators, restaurants, hotels, services that we experienced?

 

Thank you for the clarification.

Tina

[MSN-Travelers]

I do not presume to speak for Laura or site management but ...

 

We don't see the problem too often on the Mexican Riviera forum but the type post the policy covers can be found quite a bit on the St. Lucia forum (as an example). Post after post with people proclaiming what a wonderful time they had with this or that tour operator (because the operator asked them to "tell everybody" what a great time you had).

 

I believe they are asking us to wait until somebody asks the question; asks us for a recommendation or asks us to report our expirience.

 

I think this will cut down on redundent threads that, by shear volume, slow down the site server's performance. Dropping the "who's logged in right now" block that used to be in the lower right of each page increased perfomance dramatically.

[morriscats]

How are people going to know to "ask the question" when cruisers can't tell of their experience of a certain tour? If they don't want to read a certain thread, don't click on it. I learned so much here, especially about my "now favorite tour guide who shall be nameless(right Suzy)" on this board - how would I have known about her without all the posts? This is not advertising - just information.

[suziehmkr]

Morriscats - my point exactly which is why I would love some clarification on the subject. When I still had my review linked in my signature, I would get posts for quite a long time after.... even after a year! So, everyone loves to hear what our experiences were and I hope we aren't going to be prevented from posting reviews. I know after my trip I am going to want to RAVE about Frank, the ATV tour in Cabo and whatever we do in PV so others can enjoy themselves too! Otherwise, what really is the point of having the board?

 

MSN - I understand what you are talking about... but like Morriscats said, we can decide what threads to read. If the search feature worked better, this might not happen as much. Also - it is nice to read CURRENT info - because reviews can have old contact info in it, ... etc.

[gottago2mexico]

The whole point is to eliminate people going on the board just to tout one tour operator or another. You know, like if a tour operator has all his friends go on the board and spam it.

 

The thought is, I think, that if somebody posts a question "What's a good Whale Watching tour in Cabo" for example, then you can recommend one that you think was good or that you had a good time with. However, don't just post a new thread on the board saying "XX Whale Watching is awesome!" with a link to their site.

 

A lot of tour operators or restaurant owners themselves come on the boards and post these type of threads without any useful information, just to get people to go to their websites, which is the spam that they're trying to reduce.

 

In the whole context of a trip report, I don't think that's the issue at hand...a tour operator or restaurant owner isn't going to take the time to thoughtfully answer somebody's question and formulate a fake trip report just so that he can post his link - or at least I think that's the theory.

 

Just my take - if you want the straight story, you'd want to ask Laura.

[suziehmkr]

I understand the jist of it.... I think those of us that read these boards can tell an "advertising" post from a truly enthusiastic endorsement. My point is that the restrictions on this board have increased over the few years that I have been here and it is getting tough to even help people out with sincere postings & information. I asked a person to email me because they were having a hard time reaching a tour operator... this operator happens to be a friend of mine and I was trying to be helpful to the OP - but my email was zapped. I wasn't trying to solicit business for this operator, etc. I was trying to help a visitor to the boards. I would hope that someone would be willing to do the same for me at some point.

 

The question was posed to Laura in my original post, but it has not been addressed as of yet.

[morriscats]

If I had not read about "you know who and her Happy Horses" I would not have known to ask about horseback riding in Mazatlan. And I would have missed out on our favorite thing to do now when we are there and the friends we have made there. Most of us, as Suzy said, can spot an advertising post and if a few slip by, so what? This is an information board and if someone has info to share, all the better. We read what we want to read and skip the rest (like babies in diapers, is this formal enough, etc). Hi to you - whoever you are!!!!!