If the vacation club has no website or cannot be found in Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, that’s a huge warning sign. 2. The do not accept credit cards – Booking with a credit card gives you protection. Some credit card companies can reverse the charges if you prove to them that you have been scammed. If a vacation club agent asks for cash up-front, wire transfers or money order, you’d better think twice. 3. Deceptive photos – Look at the photos they post on their website and surely, they look amazing. Then, head on over to Trip Advisor where you will see user-submitted photos. Compare the photos to see what you’re really getting. If the discrepancy between the photos is big, the website photos are probably deceptive. Then ask yourself, why? 4. The reviews look fake – Read the reviews you see on their website. Sometimes your gut will tell you if the reviews are fake, especially if you compare them to reviews written in Trip Advisor.
5 against White’s most popular approach – the Reversed Dragon setup. Bulgarian GM Dejan Bojkov uses very recent top GM games to highlight the trends in the line and to explain the ideas behind Black’s development. During this accidental free day, there was some activity at the hotel. Some things were repaired or fixed. The organiser immediately took credit for these improvements. But it came a bit too late. Social networks were filled with pictures of the disastrous conditions for which people were heavily overcharged. There were many complaints from the other hotels too. An ultimatum was signed by every participant of our hotel that we should be reimbursed and receive an official apology. On the next day, the organiser capitulated and decided to return half of the money to the participants who stayed in Los Tilos. The food was also improved, although it remained way below normal standards. How did the championships go?
There are no direct flights to Santorini from the USA, Canada, or Australia. How do I get to Santorini? There are multiple daily Athens to Santorini ferries (4.5 to 6 hours by highspeed ferry). The islands of Naxos, Paros, Ios, Milos, Folegandros, Mykonos, and Crete (1 to 3 hours) will have direct ferries from April to early November, and sometimes year-round for Naxos and Paros. Flights from Athens to Santorini take less than 1 hour, direct flights from western Europe (London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Venice) take 2 to 4 hours. How big is Santorini? Santorini has a population of 15,500 and a land area of 76 square kilometers (an area a little bigger than Manhattan). The length of the island is 16 km and its width varies from 1 to 5 km. It takes 45 minutes to drive from one end of Santorini to the other. What is the best month to go to Santorini? The best time to visit Santorini for good weather, boat tours, swimming, sunbathing, and nightlife is from June to September.
The rating of the aforementioned facilities are determined through a points system. Hotels, apartment hotels, and resorts are graded according to their service, facility quality and condition, and business practices. The Department of Tourism classifies the criteria used into seven dimensions or “business area” namely: Arrival & Departure, Public Areas, Bedrooms, Food & Beverage, Lounge Area, Kitchen Area, Amenities, and Business Practices, all common to the three categories except Kitchen and Lounge Area which is only applicable to apartment hotels. 1,000 points is the maximum number of points an establishment can attain. The HOTREC (Hotels, Restaurants & Cafés in Europe) is an umbrella organization for 39 associations from 24 European countries. At a conference in Bergen in 2004, the partners drafted a hotel classification system in order to harmonize their national standards. In 2007 HOTREC launched the European Hospitality Quality scheme (EHQ) which has since accredited the existing national inspection bodies for hotel rating. Under the patronage of HOTREC, the hotel associations of Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland created the Hotelstars Union.
TripAdvisor doesn’t support responsible or sustainable travel. Like most mass-market travel companies, TripAdvisor and Viator funnel commissions taken from local businesses out of the local community. So when you purchase a bike tour on TripAdvisor instead of through a Paris-based company, 20% of that payment goes to a corporation in Massachusetts, not to business owners living and working in Paris. Purchasing services from small businesses through booking agencies goes against the basic tenets of sustainable travel. It also results in higher prices overall when small businesses with tight margins have to raise their prices to compensate for the large cut taken by booking agencies like TripAdvisor. Conclusion: So what can responsible travelers do about it? TripAdvisor isn’t going away anytime soon, and it’s unrealistic to expect travelers or business owners to ignore it completely. The goal of this article was to make travelers aware of TripAdvisor’s business practices. It’s not meant to be the final word on TripAdvisor, but an invitation to discuss possible alternatives and the bigger issue of trust in the travel industry.
