Carlton Hotel group staff urged to write positive web reviews

dublogic

ooooooops!

Irish Times 31/01/2012

Conor Pope

"ONE OF the State’s largest hotel chains planned a campaign involving “a bank” of people aimed at generating false positive reviews on the influential TripAdvisor website.Internal communication seen by The Irish Times indicates that the Carlton Hotel Group encouraged dozens of employees and other nominees to post positive reviews of the chain’s 10 hotels to TripAdvisor.
According to the email, sent to at least 29 employees in the summer of 2010 and copied to the hotel group’s directors, the group wanted “a more pro-active management of the reviews on Trip Advisor” and it said a plan had been agreed which would see managers nominate five people from each hotel to post fake reviews.
The mail, sent by the group’s sales and marketing head Jean O’Connell, said 150 “TripAdvisor Posters” would be contacted by senior hotel staff and told which hotel they were to review and given a timeframe in which to post. “By pooling TA posters it will give better flexibility and IP addresses will be from across the country,” the memo said.
General managers were also asked to appoint someone “to take a minimum of 30 photographs that reflect the excellent product you have and key USPs you want to get across. Not professional photos but good quality from a digital camera is fine.”
Posters to the site would have “to be capable and agree to post a positive reply approx each quarter as requested”. They were forbidden from using “a Carlton laptop/PC of any kind” and would be expected to post photographs sent from head office. “An improvement each month across all hotels will be expected with particular focus on the hotels that are deemed to be underperforming,” it said.
Ms O’Connell confirmed last night she had sent the email but said it was only a proposal and the policy had never been implemented. She said that it had been drafted in response to what she claimed was “evidence of fake reviews” about their hotels. She said at a further meeting sales staff were told to ignore the policy and insisted that if TripAdvisor went back over the reviews of the hotel, “it won’t find any evidence of fake reviews.
Trip Advisor’s communications director Emma Shaw said a “full and detailed investigation” was under way and the company had “a zero tolerance approach” to such activity.
Eversheds solicitors, writing on behalf of the hotel group to The Irish Times last night, said: “Our client instructs that the content of the email is a misinterpretation of the intention of the Board which was at all times to encourage positive posts from happy guests and not to in any way encourage employees of our client to publish posts on the TripAdvisor website relating to our client.
“Immediately following the email being sent, steps were taken by our client to contact the hotel managers to explain that a mistake had occurred and to confirm how hotel online reviews were to be handled. Thereafter the online marketing group of our client met on August 4th, 2010 to discuss the corrective measures that had already been taken by our client in response to the misrepresentative email of 14 July 2010.
“In so far as our client is aware, the actions referred to in the email of 14 July 2010 were never acted upon by any employee of our client and is unaware of any such posts being made on the ‘TripAdvisor’ website by employees in the manner suggested.”

Dublin Mark

I was always very sceptical about Trip Advisor and I guess this proves it!


Did a quick search on Trip Advisor about the Carlton Hotels and there is a quite a few extra photographs put up between July - September 2010!! People with only a few reviews as well..


You have to give them credit though, as it is a very well thought out plan - different IP addresses etc!

martyoo

You have to give them credit though, as it is a very well thought out plan

Not that well thought out when they were using their hotel email addresses to communicate their plan. All it takes is one disgruntled employee to expose it.

Thats the kind of plan that should be communicated over the phone or in the pub.

Dublin Mark

martyoo wrote: »

Not that well thought out when they were using their hotel email addresses to communicate their plan. All it takes is one disgruntled employee to expose it.

Thats the kind of plan that should be communicated over the phone or in the pub.

Very true! And that I am guessing is what happened

Sponge Bob

http://m.carlton.ie/team

Jean O'Connell - Director of Sales & Marketing
Jean was promoted to this position having excelled in the Sales & Marketing role with the Carlton Hotel Group for the past 7 years. Jean has responsibility for ensuring that the Sales team is driven to achieve stringent sales targets and ensuring that marketing budgets and resources are utilised to maximise the revenue return across all hotels. Having gained experience in all markets, she is recognised as one of top sales & marketing professionals, achieving annual sales and marketing awards including the achievement of Best National Sales Professional.

FouxDaFaFa

I'm really surprised that such a big chain would be stupid enough to do this.

Dublin Mark

Looks like they have been really caught out!

From today's Times:

Hotel urged 'proactive' operation of fake reviews

CONOR POPE, Consumer Affairs Correspondent



A LEADING hotel chain’s insistence it never asked its staff to post fake reviews to the TripAdvisor website has been disputed by a number of current and former employees.
They have provided The Irish Times with fresh emails that suggest a widespread campaign aimed at manipulating the review site’s rankings was fully implemented in the summer of 2010.
Earlier this week, this newspaper reported the Carlton Hotel Group, which has properties in Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Kinsale, Tralee, Wexford, Kildare and Westport, encouraged dozens of its employees and other nominees to post fake positive reviews of its 10 hotels on TripAdvisor.
An email sent to at least 29 employees that summer by the hotel’s sales and marketing manager Jean O’Connell, and copied to board members including managing director John Varley, called for a “more proactive management of the reviews on TripAdvisor”. The memo said all managers were to nominate five people from their hotel to post fake reviews.
“By pooling TripAdvisor posters, it will give better flexibility and IP addresses will be from across the country,” the memo said, before warning would-be posters not to use company computers for any such posts.
After contacting Carlton, its legal representatives Eversheds warned this newspaper against publishing the story and said that “immediately after the email was sent to the hotel employees, steps were taken by our client to contact the hotel managers to explain that a mistake had occurred and to confirm how hotel online reviews were to be handled”.
The solicitors’ letter went on to say that “insofar as our client is aware, the actions referred to in the email of July 14th, 2010, were never acted upon by any employee”. Eversheds said its client was “unaware of any such posts being made on the TripAdvisor website by employees in the manner suggested”.
However, a number of past and present employees have insisted this response does not tally with the facts. Staff members who expressed concern at the initial attempts to manipulate the reviews after they got Ms O’Connell’s mail were told the policy was being implemented regardless of any concerns they might have.
In late September 2010, all 10 hotel managers and the board of directors received an email described as “This Week’s Trip Advisor Weekly Report”. It included a “TripAdvisor Posting Schedule”.
“To date I have requested 24 TA Posters to write reviews and only 11 have responded to my emails,” the sender of the email, based in the hotel’s head office in Dublin, wrote. “I am currently outstanding 13 TA Posters to respond which I have chased 3 times.”
She asked all hotel managers “as a matter of urgency” to contact the people in their hotels who had been assigned to be TripAdvisor posters, but who had yet to make contact with her, to “respond back to me as soon as possible”.
The email went on to say that “in order for us to have a positive impact on Trip Advisor, we are dependent on each member who has agreed to post to action this. This activity directly benefits your online position.”
On November 1st, 2010, a further email was sent to managers from Ms O’Connell. It contained a revised TripAdvisor policy that made no mention of posts by staff members. Instead, the email asked managers to delete the email she had sent the previous July which had outlined how the fake review plan would work and to also inform both her and Mr Varley when the email had been deleted.
Responding yesterday, the hotel chain said: “The statements made by Carlton Hotel Group on Monday were based on the information available to it at that time. The group has no further comment to make pending investigations, which are ongoing