“Tripadvisor is a great page” says Birna Mjöll Atladóttir, hotelier at Hótel Breiðavík in Iceland. A guest recently visited the hotel and used Tripadvisor to threaten hotel staff to get discounts and changes to his accommodation and logistics around his stay at the hotel. (Reported by Icelandic dv.is)
“We went far beyond anything we have done to please this person, he told us that if we would not adapt to his wishes he would downgrade the hotel on Tripadvisor. He made it clear that he was a powerful user on Tripadvisor that regularly wrote reviews and had as an example given Grand Hotel in Reykjavik 3 stars because they did not want to accommodate him.”
According to Birna Mjöll, the man asked to be in a room that was on a corridor were no other guests stayed and dine alone at 17:00 , the kitchen normally does not open until 19:00. The two requests were based on the reason that he was a loner and wanted to be exclusive.
“We like Tripadvisor, people can write their comments and we can react to them” says the hotelier and continues “we find it always best that people come directly to us when they have problems”.
Hotel Breiðavík has three and a half stars on Tripadvisor and mostly gets good reviews.
According to a Facebook status that Birna posted on the matter she is fairly sure that the man will give them bad reviews anyway, she says “we went over and beyond in pleasing him, but he finished his say on the matter by telling us that he normally got free nights after posting bad reviews as compensation for the bad services he received”.
What is interesting is that he said all this before he was officially a guest, while he was registering to the room.
Birna Mjöll points out that she recognizes the power people have online but to use it this way makes her sad. “He used this to ask for things we don’t even provide” she says and continues “we should have said no right from the beginning. I am a bit numb after this experience”.