The other day I was researching hotels for an upcoming trip to Europe and came across a review on a Starwood property in Venice; it was beautifully written, very balanced, and complete with photographs. A customer wrote it.
It turns out that two avid Starwood fans created a whole site where customers can find unbiased reviews of the chain’s properties uploaded by other customers — the users themselves. The site was created at the end of 2005 by John H. and John P.
“Researching your hotel should be an easy and uncluttered experience that focuses on the issues you care about most,” they write. A built in community forum allows people to jump in and join the conversation. The photography is pretty compelling as well.
So let’s review:
– Compelling stories about people’s stay at Starwood properties
– Very good photography (they use Flickr)
– Community forum (they use Flyertalk)
– Featured main review and lobby art
All written by customers with the exception of the news section, which is pulled from Yahoo. It would have been nice to have this site organized like a blog, but I can see why it wasn’t done this way — the write ups are reviews made by customers and not designed to be the launching pad for conversations. Instead, they are already posts complete with opinions and detailed descriptions from diverse points of view. Those of guests who have stayed at a Starwood hotel.
