This may sound counter productive to promoting our small business, but please read below to find out why this is important. If you don't have an established account on travel forums, including Trip Advisor, Fodor's or Lonely Planet, to name a few, no matter how helpful you are trying to be, it could end up in disaster for the company you're trying to review. Savvy Trip Advisor travelers are suspicious of first-time reviewers and may reply with comments that are mean and not in the spirit of your intent at all.  

Trip Advisor ranks reviewers so that consumers can feel confident about the information being posted.  Reviewers get stars and badges and may even establish their own following as a "destination expert."  And in June 2015, Trip Advisor introduced the new "TripCollective Member Recognition Program."  Points will be awarded to the author of every comment and contribution. Not just for reviews. You can visit the link and see from the comments by some of the most highly ranked reviewers, not all reviewers are ready to jump on board with the new program.   

Ranking reviewers is one way that Trip Adviser tries to combat negative reviews written for revenge or mischief. Each reviewer has a member profile that allows travelers to check a reviewer's history and decide how reliable and useful the information is. Unfortunately, the last thing we want you to do is rush home excitedly from your trip and start opening new accounts on travel forums so you can write about your travels with us!  Please don't do this.Travelers may read your review of our company and become suspicous.  Why?

Travel forums have become one of the most valuable yet cut-throat business tools in the history of travel business. Some businesses have paid or rewarded people (who may not have used the service) for writing reviews online, because it's free advertising!  The only thing worse than having a bad review on Trip Advisor is having a review written by someone with a new account!

We came up with suggested guidelines for travelers who want to support a service or travel company they used:

• you must have an account to post comments or reviews on Trip Advisor, Fodor's and Lonely Planet Forums.  It's not worth it to open an account to post one review or comment, then not use the account ever again.  
• if you travel frequently or plan to use your account to ask questions, please do open an account, but avoid writing reviews about companies/services until you have established your identify and member profile.  (you don't have to publicly use your full name)
• if you want to promote a company and provide reliable information to others who may be interested, alternatives to using online travel forums include mentions on social media.  Which works out great if you're posting photos anyway. 
• You don't have to have a gmail account to write a Google Review.  Go to google search bar and type in the company name.  On the right side of your screen you should see the company profile /map pop up.  And you'll see a link to "write a review." 

We love it when Adios Adventure Travel groups leave us to return home, and ask us what they can do to help promote our company.  We invite them to tell their friends.  Word of mouth is still the most useful and genuine way to share travel stories.  Although a Google Review is the next best thing!  Contact us and we're happy to send you a link to the google review page.  info @ AdiosAdventureTravel.com