Site Idea - Resort Guide
I’m into week number two of the holiday, I’ve ran out of clean pants and am currently sat in some Turkish café playing a lottery to see what today’s pizza will be like. Which got me thinking, what would be really cool is an online resort guide.
The way I’d see it working is as a user submitted review site, where tourists could write about the various places they’ve visited and eateries they’d got food poisoning at (only happened to my girlfriend once so far this year).
The main effort in this would be encouraging participation and getting people to write about their experiences. You could offer a prize draw for all entries whilst if people want to bitch and slate a place for bad service they’d probably welcome a soap box.
I reckon the idea has global potential with a pretty healthy bit of financial investment. However if you live in a tourist resort then creating a tourist friendly guide about your hometown would be pretty cheap if not free to do (I’m thinking questionaires at local tourist spots).
The other big saving to this is the fact you could do holidays on expenses, which means a whole load of tax saving 
(Al is enjoying his holiday this week so sent this post from his phone which I put live on his behalf)
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That’s a great idea although there are some big names doing it already. Checkout Expedia.com, I often use their traveller review section when researching hotels.
I would love to do something like this; the problem is there are so many sites already doing it.
An example would be HolidayWatchdog.com - they have user reviews on both resorts and accommodation.
Similarly, the Lonely Planet website has a busy forum where people tend to write about their experiences with specific resorts and hotels.
Who cares about all that though, when you would be able to write off such a large chunk of your travel expenses!
- Martin Reed
Since there are so many other sites doing this already, how about zooming in on a more specific niche? For example, set up a “Best Vacation Photo” site where your audience submits their photos that are (Digg-like, or Youtube-like) voted by other readers. The winners of each geograghical area become semi-finalist and compete against each other for the grand prize, etc. Ok, maybe I’ve been watching a little too much American Idol . . .
Trip Advisor http://www.tripadvisor.com already does this I think. Maybe TravelMole http://www.travelmole.com, too?
Anything that involves getting holidays a t a reduced price has to be good
This idea definitely has potential. It can also be molded for, say, restaurants in a town.
Yelp.com was featured in Fortune magazine. It was started by the founders of Pay Pal. It has users reviewing and rating their local restaurants and night clubs. The top reviewers get invited to exclusive parties and premiers. Its a great idea and very useful, but, you know — I don’t spend a lot of time on it. No more than I would, for example, at a site to look up movie times.
Stop working, go and lie on the beach!
Yeah Al - you are on holiday!! Just make Scott post more to compensate for your absence
I like the idea. Its good and has a lot of potential. Its unique and useful, so visitors are likely to return. It’ll also draw a wide range of international audience too.
But also a lot of spam potential too
Spam potential is always a concern with user reviews. I run a site that allows users to review services and while of course it’s important to try to implement systems to detect proprietors touting their own services or bashing their competitors, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the lack of this kind of thing. I suppose it’s not worth potentially being kicked off the site.
scuba equipment…
The smartest course of action is to do your analysis comprehensively….
It’s a good idea. Anything which encourages user generated content is awesome!