http://www.trivago.co.uk

Just joined this site.. Takes a bit of working out, but looks promising. One drawback is that it takes only travel/hotel reviews at the moment.. http://www.trivago.co.uk

Hello everyone,

This site is interesting. For just two weeks now as a member, im on my level 3 status! A little bit tricky in browsing the site and do some postings especially for new attractions, but it is a worthwhile undertaking. Join now!

marcelle wrote:

Just joined this site.. Takes a bit of working out, but looks promising. One drawback is that it takes only travel/hotel reviews at the moment.. http://www.trivago.co.uk

And indeed for ever..as it is a travel/hotel site...

If you have an old dormant account and have drifted off - please come back and have another crack at Trivago. We need a lot more active .co.uk members and if you've struggled in the past, I hope others - like Rey (Curious tan) will confirm that we're all doing our best to help people get the hang of the site.

I think some terms need to be worked out.

For example "Transient" in hotel terms simply means "guest who stays for a short time"

In industry terms the first classification of guest is normally "group" or "transient" before getting into minor market segments

But if I tick the box "suitable for transient" I am continually marked down - even for hotels in my own 4*/exclusive group).

As someone senior in hotel sales with a huge budget to reach, (the majority of which is "transient") this makes no sense at all..!

There are things like 'transient' that get a bit garbled in translation - but if you raise them in the forum and make a good case, they generally get changed.

We complained that 'animation' meant cartoons to us Brits and not the organised activities that it implied in German. So...... we now have 'organised activities' instead. They had 'recreation' but the definitions showed they actually meant 'relaxation' so that's also changed or in the process of being changed.

There are definitions for all the terms and you just have to follow those- transients means people dropping in as they pass and implies hotels that are near to major roads or intersections - a bit 'travellodge'. If your fourstars are 10 miles from a road then they won't be considered to be that useful for transients.

I agree it's not the right word in English (most people think it means tramps and travellers) but I'd also say that most people equally are unaware of your industry definitions and it's NOT an industry site so you can't expect that we'll follow the inside lingo of the industry.

Give us a better word and we'll make a case for it being changed - the UK site has relatively few members so it's not difficult to get changes agreed.

And as for being marked down, if that was the only error you made you wouldn't get marked down for it and if it was one of many, then it wouldn't add up to anything much. Remember that all hotels have a pre-determined maximum value and if you pick one with only 60% the deductions come off that number and not off 100%. A low rate doesn't mean you did a bad job, it just means that hotel is less valuable to the site (because it has few or no booking partners to generate income). Personally I only pick hotels with 90% or 100% base ratings - you can find them on the admin page at 'complete hotel'

For me one of the good things about trivago is that so much of the marking is not of the person but of the source. It takes away a lot of the pettiness of the review sites.

So please, other ex or dormant members, tell us why you have given up or stopped doing so much. Maybe trivago can address those problems.

Hi Helen, I just replied to your entry in my guestbook on trivago. There is not much I can add to Barbaras explanation. The user who approved the hotel in question just told me that - as Barbara reckoned - he did not penalise your for ticking transients.

Regarding this term (and finding maybe a better name for it) I accompany Barbaras suggestion to raise this in our forum. It doesn't help so much to discuss it here ;-) I hope you understand.

curious_tan wrote:

Hello everyone,

This site is interesting. For just two weeks now as a member, im on my level 3 status! A little bit tricky in browsing the site and do some postings especially for new attractions, but it is a worthwhile undertaking. Join now!

You are absolutely right. Trivago's complexity is a bit of a drawback of the site. In the past two years we were busy to reach a critical mass of users (we have 4 different language versions now!) and booking numbers.

Now we are focussing on improving the usability of the site especially for the community. Adding different content types will become much easier, I am currently working in a task force that will completely redesign input forms and help texts.

We will create little tutorials for each tasks and there are always little competitions aiming at introducing different tasks to the not so experienced users (an interesting one is coming up with the next newsletter on Friday. Watch out for it).

And finally every user is assigned to a mentor upon registration. This is an experienced user who gets rewards for supporting newbies. Please accept their offers for help and don't feel ashamed to ASK anything you want to know about trivago.

curious_tan wrote:

Hello everyone,

This site is interesting. For just two weeks now as a member, im on my level 3 status! A little bit tricky in browsing the site and do some postings especially for new attractions, but it is a worthwhile undertaking. Join now!

You are absolutely right. Trivago's complexity is a bit of a drawback to the site. In the past two years we were busy to reach a critical mass of users (we have 4 different language versions now!) and booking numbers.

But now we are focussing on improving the usability of the site especially for the community. Adding different content types will become much easier, I am currently working in a task force that will completely redesign input forms and help texts. If you have any suggestions, fire away! I'm open to your ideas

We will create little tutorials for each tasks and there are always little competitions aiming at introducing different tasks to the not so experienced users (an interesting one is coming up with the next newsletter on Friday. Watch out for it).

And finally every user is assigned to a mentor upon registration. Mentors are experienced users who get rewards for supporting newbies. Please accept their offers for help and don't feel ashamed to ASK them anything you want to know about trivago.

As we say in German: "There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers"

I didnt know I had access to a forum...but point taken and I will check for next time

Thanks!

What he didn't mention was you need a degree in German to figure out how to join the forum! Took me ages to get into it.

Sascha - do be a dear and send Helen the link to your 'idiot proof guide to joining in German without having to understand German'.

Done! A short explanation how to fill in the registration form can be found here:
http://forum.trivago.de/viewtopic.php?t=2083
(only registration is in German, the forum itself is in English)

Helen, you'll find the link in your guestbook too.

One point I'd like to make about Trivago - which for me is probably the reason I spend more time there than on dooyoo or ciao these days - is that the longer you are there, the more you do and the more involved you get, the more trivago treats you like you are important and you matter. And of course, the greater the earning potential.

The thing that's really *Bad word* me off on the review sites is that they don't seem to give a damn about their more experienced users. If we quit they don't care - there are 2 zillion white dots coming up behind us. OK, you get a nice coloured dot now and then, you rarely have a hope in hell of a diamond and they don't answer your mails when you grumble.

With trivago, the more points you have, the more things you can do and the greater your earning potential. It takes a while to get the hang of things - but that's a learning process. There are people on the review sites for years who write as badly after 100 or 200 reviews as they did on day one. They don't learn a thing.

There are members on the UK trivago site who've been making well in excess of £100/month (not me!) which would be hard to achieve on the review sites.

koshkha wrote:

So please, other ex or dormant members, tell us why you have given up or stopped doing so much. Maybe trivago can address those problems.

OK I have not yet tried to get access to forum, but thank you for the links Sascha, although at the moment it is low down my priority list for a few weeks at least. finding tens of thousands of "transients" being a tad higher

As I am in the firing line here, I have endeavoured to explain my point I made about Transients on the site directly, but as what I said about what a transients is ...to me the same as what trivago says...in terms of short stay etc at least ( if not on the junction of a motorway etc...) so I don't know there is a better term, but clearly a misunderstanding about implementation of common terms.

The hotel mentioned on this thread wasnt the one I was referring to (and indeed being about half a minute and a roundabout from the M56 I wouldn't think that one was arguable on anyone's interpretation!!

However, as the other one is 7 miles from the third busiest airport in the country (which is mere minutes in Airport terms - it is seven miles and more to some Car Parks) and 3 mins from a main trainline etc, as well as one of the major hotels for the adjoining towns, might help explain why this particular member is/was a trifle confuddled!!

I'll get my coat...

Trivago.co.uk needs people who have time to share their knowledge on places (tourist attractions), accommodations, or even websites that they have visited before and happy to share them to other travel lovers. There are mentors and members who are supportive enough to make things manageable to ensure my postings are ok and well credited.

Frankly, yes the shares matter (for the effort/time/resources) but being a member of this on-line community that have the same objective to makes others' travel enjoyable and hassle-free, I think that matters really is how you share your effort to build-up the database and eventually promote the places that I have been visited or in my case the place where Im currently residing now.

Trivago can build up good relationships with other dedicated members without much of competition (in terms of who is the best writers or who get much or the popular buddies/COTs) but rather helping each other to maintain the philosophy of the site. I think, sometimes it needs additional hardwork (as compare to other consumer sites) to step on the various levels which only show how much every member contributed in the site.

At first, it was tricky, disappointing but at the end it is rewarding. There are always members or the mentors who will always extend their assistance if things went wrong. For example, like SaschaT (Sascha), koshkha (Barbara) who are very supportive to new members.

Finally, inviting people to the site is really good. This is not one time bonus points, but you get 30% (continuously) from the total shares earned by the new recruit. So if the new recruit is active then the chances of getting better earnings are high!

And again, trivago can be promoted as 'partner link' to your existing personal blogs or journals and having that you get additional shares. A good example of this is my travel blog account which trivago is link to each all my journals.

http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/digital_explorer/

Give it a try and we are happy to assist you, making your membership a worthwhile experience! It is tricky but it is requires dedication to making the membership rewarding!

NOTE: Thanks Barbara for the tips and advice! Very much appreciated!