The Yelp community (and beyond) are all a flurry this week with two big stories. Both fascinating enough to be repeated on the blog.
1. A hotel in New York has a company policy and contractual language for anyone hosting an event (ie wedding) that they will be charged $500 for every negative review from any of their guests. The hotel policy goes on to say that many times guests don't appreciate the character or artistic touches of the hotel, so the event hosts (bride and groom) are instructed to educate their guests about the hotel and warn them to stay at a Marriott if they can't appreciate what the hotel has to offer. Furthermore, the consequences of leaving anything but a glowing review will costs the hosts $500.
http://pagesix.com/2014/08/04/hotel-charges-500-for-every-bad-review-posted-online/
Isn't that the fascinating most fascinating way to manage your PR image?! Coerce and threaten your way to good reviews rather than taking the feedback and making improvements so guests WANT to leave a GOOD review. Unsurprisingly, there has been an outpouring of nasty reviews online (over 3,500 in the past three days on Yelp alone) after the story went viral. The hotel refused to comment at first, and after two days of onslaught finally came out saying the policy was tongue in cheek and a joke. Nice try guys! Even today, most of the policy is still on their official website--the $500 fine is the only part they removed. They apparently are serious about the condescending attitude of many guests to their establishment not being able to appreciate or understand the character of their place, nor are they joking when they tell the event hosts to educate all their guests about why their establishment is so great. Nor were they joking about the snide responses they posted to reviews that were made well before these articles came out earlier this week. Hmmm....
The hotel appears to be attempting to salvage their reputation and probably existence by offering a whooping 10% discount if you like their Facebook page. Good luck with that!
2. The second company to take a beating this week is the Blue Plate Co. (they own restaurants like Highland Grill, Edina Grill, Freehouse, Lowry, Scusi, etc). I actually feel a little bad for these guys because the Star Tribune wrote a nasty article about their new policy when many restaurant employees are commenting that this has been standard practice nearly everywhere else for years. Perhaps it was the way Blue Plate delivered the news to their employees that really landed them in hot water. Employees arrived to work following the implementation of the increased minimum wage, with a letter from the owners congratulating them all on getting a raise and how much they deserve it! The letter went on to say that because they now had to pay their employees more money (an additional 75 cents/hour), in addition to providing them healthcare under Obamacare, they can no longer afford the fees for customers who use credit cards, so they will be passing the tip proportion of that fee onto the servers. The math in the article indicates that this effectively reduces the 75 cent wage increase to about 45 cents.
http://www.startribune.com/local/270082251.html?page=1&c=y
Blue Plate is getting raked over the coals for being "greedy". To be honest, I don't think the article gives Blue Plate a fair shake by disclosing that most other restaurants also do this, and I'm really not sure if I think the business should pay the fee on tips. They should definitely pay it on the meal, no question. It seems kinda cheap to do this, but I can't fairly comment whether they can afford it without seeing their financial books.
The more interesting part of this story is reading all the comments -- servers living paycheck to paycheck already, owners driving porches while their employees are on food stamps, to Democrats ruining this country with all their handouts, to everyone on welfare abusing the system, to servers that make $250/night in tips and that should be plenty to live on.
I hope you found these little gems are interesting as I did.
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