parasites of the tourism industry

A few years ago we ran a small rural cafe in the South West called "Mumbles" (because it was in Mumballup, it was also a parody on common cafe names like "Whispers" and "Rumours"). It didn't flourish, so we converted it to an accommodation business of the same name, which did. In the course of running both, we had a lot of exposure to all of the agencies which parasitize the tourism and hospitality industry; spent a bit of money on a few of them, and realised virtually no benefit from any of them.

star ratings

Star Ratings Australia has a chequered history but still operates under basically the same outdated business model, allocating stars based on a business' facilities, and supposedly providing regular independent auditing to ensure standards are maintained.

In practice, what you get is accommodation that will have been visited once in the previous three years by someone who gave the owner up to two weeks notice of the inspection, who didn't stay there, or necessarily even see inside the unit you could stay in. They would have been treated like royalty, so couldn't objectively assess any of the service or hospitality on offer, or any of the value represented. There's nothing independent about it because the provider pays for it and is SRA's customer. We know of one owner who quit the scheme and was offered an extra half star to re-join.

Most people have their own idea of what 4 or 5 star accommodation looks like without needing to know the thread count of the sheets or the hours that Reception is open; hosts and guests alike are relying more on review sites that offer a more credible alternative, and may only use star ratings as a guide to facilities on offer. SRA have clamped down on businesses self-rating because it undermines their claimed intellectual property rights; their defences have included some very negative advertising denigrating non-rated establishments. How sad is that?

We've generally had better experiences at non-rated establishments that star-rated ones. Perhaps that is because the star-rated ones are usually bigger with no owners on site; perhaps it is because they don't have to take personal responsibility for their ratings. Whatever the reason, we now avoid star-rated establishments wherever possible.

quality tourism accreditation

This outfit isn't too dissimilar to the star ratings scheme, but is run by the Australian Tourism Industry Council in conjunction with the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse. In Western Australia, it absorbed a scheme called "Trust the Tick" (a tick is a small blood-sucking insect), which promised "massive exposure" and to which Mumbles was briefly accredited . According to their statistics, our listing there was seen only 46 times in the first year (all from Queensland on the same day) and only 86 times in the second year (sources unknown). These views generated just 68 click-throughs to our website ($8.50 per click) and no bookings at all. The problem seems to be that distributors focus on the international market and their websites for the most part direct tourists to iconic destinations; we had difficulty finding our own listing on most of them, and our complaints fell on deaf ears. So much for truth in advertising.

online travel agencies

Mumbles accommodation was on Booking.com for its first two years and achieved a rating of 9.9 in that time. When our own website gained traction we decided we could manage quite well without needing to pay their exhorbitant commissions and delisted (much to their surprise), but continue to get emails from them. There are plenty of other OTAs with similar business models, who only increase costs for everyone.

We used to get occasional booking requests via Trip Advisor, who we listed with for the benefit of their reviews. This particular OTA displayed a tariff considerably higher than we listed with them, and took another cut from what they gave us, for a total commission of 17.5% (we hate to think what it might be now). We don't like to see people getting ripped off, so we never synchronised our calendar with theirs and were usually already booked whan an enquiry came through. As a consequence of declining a few bookings we were threatened with account suspension. Trip Advisor stopped verifying their reviews a few years back and a lot of businesses have had problems with fake reviews since. Other OTAs that we never even listed with, freely used our business name to spam Google searches, stealing prospective customers who were told we had no vacancies before getting referred elsewhere.

"The Checkout" segment of a few years back is still very relevant, except that the commission rates have further increased. That Aussie icon, Dick Smith also had a few pertinent remarks on the subject; he refers to OTAs as leeches, which is a bit unfair on leeches because they (and maggots) have made significant contributions in the field of medical science.

Since then Airbnb has come on the scene; we were listed with them because a lot of people don't seem to look anywhere else, but their commissions are just as bad and most of our guests were surprised to know how much they could have saved, and the additional perks they could have had, just by booking direct. In some instances when we received an OTA booking we were able to trace the people on FB and suggest they did so.

travel agents generally

Apologies in advance to the reputable travel agents out there.

We booked a cruise holiday a few years back and paid a deposit to a travel agent who was supposedly an expert on the destination; unfortunately we had to cancel a few weeks later because of a medical issue. The cancellation was within the cruise line's partial refund period by a few days, so they refunded half of our deposit, paying it to the travel agent. These creeps seized the opportunity to pocket it, drawing our attention to a clause in their booking conditions. We had placed a different interpretation on the clause in question and it appeared to us that it was probably deliberately ambiguous. Appeals to the travel agent, to their tame Australian Travel Industry Association, and to their ATAS Complaint Appeal Committee were rejected, even although the travel agent was required to re-word their booking conditions! We found this quite amazing; evidently self-regulation in the Travel industry doesn't work for consumers.

We probably could have taken this up with Consumer Affairs, but by the time the ATIA process was complete we were happy that it had probably cost the agent several times the amount they had pinched from us, and grateful also that we hadn't booked any air fares or hotels through them. In any case, we had booked another holiday directly with the cruise company, the hotels and the airlines.

the bottom line

No-one needs these parasites on the travel and tourism industry. By all means look in the window, look at their web sites, look at the reviews, then book direct.

Please.