Trivago offers to pay for hotel reviews
Trivago wants to pay British travellers for hotel reviews in an attempt to make its comparison website more authentic and trustworthy .
The website has said it will pay between £30 and £70 for questionnaires filled out by "mystery guests" as part of a new hotel testing programme designed to boost confidence in the accuracy and validity of its reviews.
Potential reviewers must first sign up as a hotel tester before booking a stay at a hotel that has agreed to be tested. They will have to pay full price for a room, but can expect to have an average of 40 per cent of the cost refunded into their bank account on completion of a questionnaire about their stay.
Currently, there are six hotels in London that can be tested and between two and five in other cities.
The mystery guest tests were first launched by Trivago in Germany and more than 20,000 hotel tests from 600 hotels in 20 European cities have been completed so far. Now the company is hoping that British holidaymakers will want to save money through trivago.co.uk and claims the price of some hotels could be reduced to just £10 a night.
The questionnaire will be standardised and cover more than 400 criteria covering hotel amenities, service and personal preferences and booking behaviour. Questions such as "Has your stay been disturbed by any construction works?" are also included to account for unusual circumstances, which should not unfairly distort the hotel's overall rating.
Rather than each review being posted however, the questionnaire results will be aggregated to create a "trustworthy" profile of the hotel.
A spokesman explained: "After testing, the hotel profile on Trivago is not based on one individual tester, but rather a weighted aggregation in which personal influences are minimised."
Hotels that want to receive mystery guests will have to pay a fee to take part, which starts at £2,000. In return Trivago promises them bookings, which it ensures by increasing the hotel's visibility on the website, and an improved profile due to the extensive, unbiased feedback.
The move follows criticism of online reviews, including those on rival website TripAdvisor, for being unreliable and occasionally fake.
Source: Natalie Paris, The Telegraph, London
Westin solar project produces offsets resort's energy consumption
The Westin Dawn Beach Resort & Spa, St. Maarten has completed a solar installation that allows the resort to produce six to eight hours of its own power during peak times. It is the first Westin hotel or resort in the world to complete and utilize solar panels to replace its energy consumption throughout the resort.
The resort began taking advantage of the island's abundance of sunshine in 2007 with the installation of solar panels to heat the water used in the property's guest rooms.
The resort's owner, Columbia Sussex Corporation, working with OneWorld Sustainable, has completed the installation of 2,602 Lightway solar panels for a total system capacity of 755 kilowatts.
The completed solar system will produce approximately 1,223,000 Kilowatt hours per year. This is enough electricity to power 111 average sized American homes. The system will avoid 1.9 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions or the equivalent of CO2 emissions from energy used by 43 homes annually, or 707 acres of forest preserved from deforestation by carbon sequestering.
To install the panels and mounting hardware, OneWorld Sustainable worked with a local St. Maarten company whose employees provided valuable assistance during the three month-long project. OneWorld Sustainable's President, Tim Blackwell, states, "In very few places around the world does it make better sense to utilize the power of the sun to generate electricity than in the Caribbean."
Dan Szydlowski, Regional Director, states, "With sunshine nearly guaranteed year round, we saw only positive attributes to making this capital and environmental sustainability investment.
Mozambique hopes peaceful election will bolster tourism industry
Mozambique expects a peaceful election in October to revive its image as a popular tourist destination after a series of kidnappings prompted many foreigners to shun the African country's white sandy beaches.
Tourism revenue fell more than 10 percent in 2013 to $222 million from the previous year because of the abductions and worsening violence between the army and a militia loyal to the main opposition Renamo party, said Tourism Minister Carvalho Muaria.
"People just don't like to visit places where there are problems," Muaria said in an interview in Lisbon yesterday. "The situation is getting back to normal after Renamo said it would work to take part in the elections and it knows it can't take part in the vote if it creates problems of banditry."
Mozambique, the site of the world's biggest natural gas discovery in the past decade, is investing in roads, bridges and railway lines to diversify its economy and attract foreign investment. Since the end of the country's 17-year civil war in 1992 visitors had increasingly flocked to sunbathe on Indian Ocean beaches and feast on seafood.
Last year's worsening violence in Mozambique prompted the Portuguese and Canadian governments to advise its citizens against non-essential travel to some of the country's provinces. The tourism industry accounts for about 7 percent of the former Portuguese colony's gross domestic product, according to Muaria.
A peaceful run-up to the presidential vote may help increase tourism revenue by as much as 35 percent to $300 million in 2014 from the previous year, Muaria said. Investment in the industry may rise to as much as $900 million in 2014 from about $800 million last year, he said.
"There are some international hotel chains interested in Mozambique," Muaria said. "There is also a big interest from investors from the Middle East," he said, without providing details.
Source: Henrique Almeida, Bloomberg
Ritz Carlton facing sexual harassment allegations
Attorneys, Makarem & Associates, APLC and Michael H. Kim, PC will be representing Cindy Xu in a lawsuit set for April 7 against The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, which operates The Ritz-Carlton Residences in San Francisco, CA. The Ritz-Carlton faces sexual harassment and wrongful termination allegations from Xu, a former Ritz employee who worked as a housekeeper from 2008 to November, 2012.
According to the court documents, the Plaintiff alleges that during her employment she suffered sexual harassment from her supervisor, which included sexual comments and inappropriate touching. Plaintiff further alleges that her supervisor would masturbate in her presence while performing her job duties. Other female employees suffered similar harassment from the same supervisor, according to the Plaintiff.
Court documents allege plaintiff complained to the Ritz-Carlton's human resource department. The Ritz-Carlton claims that it performed an investigation into the Plaintiff's complaints, but that the alleged harassing employee was not terminated because the Plaintiff's most severe allegations could not be substantiated.
Court records also show plaintiff quit her position in November 2012 to avoid continued sexual harassment from her supervisor and later filed a claim with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The Plaintiff is seeking to recover lost wages, damages for emotional distress, and punitive damages related to the Ritz-Carlton's failure to discipline or terminate the harassing supervisor. Jean-Paul Le Clercq, Plaintiff's attorney, states "Plaintiff complained to her human resources department in the hopes that something would be done about the harassing employee, only to be told that he would remain her supervisor despite the testimony of other employees who supported many of her allegations."
