Wednesday 4 August 2010

The Power of the Internet

The internet seems to be an integral part of most people's lives these days. I know that I and most of my friends, family and colleagues are connected to it most of the day.

This gives the worldwide web great power, and sometimes I wonder if that is necessarily a good thing.

My wife and I went away for a golfing weekend last weekend. We booked it through our usual golf trip arranger, so we were confident it would be OK. I then did a bit of research about the hotel at the golf course, and, much to my dismay, I found one very damning review.

The writer clearly felt very strongly, as she had written a very long review, listing a whole catalogue of things wrong with the hotel, not least the lack of hygiene.

In counterbalance to that review, I read many that praised the hotel, its staff, the food etcetera, but needless to say, we arrived at the place somewhat concerned about what we would find.

We need not have worried. It was, as one reviewer said, a place of "faded grandeur", but the cleanliness, size of the rooms and quality of the facilities was absolutely fine.

More than absolutely fine was the service given by every single member of the staff, who were very impressive.

The food was a little mixed, dinner and lunch being very good while breakfast was less impressive.

The only point of agreement I found with the damning review was the poor quality of the mattress, and we were assured that is due for replacement.

So it just goes to show - one damning review could spread like wildfire and damage that hotel for years to come, and yet we had a great weekend.

It takes a long time to build up a good reputation but only moments to build up a bad one. Never was that saying more true than in these internet days.

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