Kagehitokiri

"other people money" ? thats not miles...

HadesNL

When it comes to tripreporting and reviewing, the tone is set between award/holiday/aspirational/endless time - paid/work/must/tight schedule. I find that most blogs focus on the first tone, while i find on FT it's usually the latter. Although there have been lots of maximiser threads on how to hump the F-seat to get extatic pleasure and satisfaction, FT-members do provide helpfull practical tips and better advice as regular travellers for regular travellers.

I would actually rate my confidence in the pool of FT-members higher then bloggers who have never flown Y/LCC /never stayed at non-chainconglomo hotels/ can't surive without ultra uber hip goddess status

kokonutz

Agree.

My trip next week is:

USAir DCA-SRQ ($233 sadly no premium cabin on this plane but nonstop flight) Bloggers in Coach? Forget it!

Holiday Inn SRQ

JetBlue SRQ-LGA ($133 + $60 even more...sadly no premium cabin on this plane but nonstop flight) Other than Seth, I'm not sure any of the major bloggers have every flown JetBlue.

Conrad NYC

Emirates Business on the A380 (with stand up bar on board!) JFK-MXP ($1900 RT) Almost all of the blogger reviews of the Emirates A380 were unhelpfully of award flights in F.

Excelsior Starwood Luxury Milan

VRBO flat on Lake Como Bloggers review a VRBO? Heavens forbid!

Emirates Business MXP-JFK

Delta First JFK-DCA $145 Uh oh, skypesos!

I got all my data points from FlyerTalk (and Seth) as most bloggers don't really travel this way.

Being loyalty agnostic ROCKS!

Doctor of Credit

I fly exclusively coach (for both business and pleasure, yay being short) and normally stay at small B&B on through VRBO/AirBnB. Even though I don't review travel products, I wouldn't review these products if I did.

The beauty of reviewing a chain hotel is that they often have 300+ beds, meaning a lot of your readers might actually find the review useful. If I review a small bed & breakfast in rural Indonesia that has two beds, either it'll fill up extremely quickly and nobody will be able to book OR nobody will want to travel there and the vast majority of readers will find it borderline useless.

Same with coach products and LCC's, there really isn't that much to review (apart from maybe seat pitch and room between seats, all of which can be easily found). For example, I'll give you a recent trip report.

I flew Singapore > Yogyakarta with AirAsia. The flight was nice and it arrived on time. They had toilets. The end. I agree that bloggers posting the same .... over and over again is annoying, but I sure don't want to read LCC trip reports either.

Free market does a pretty good job of dictating these things, if you really think there is a demand for VRBO + LCC reviews, start a blog and see how successful it is.

sbm12

There can be more than just that. Things like the airport experience, tips on where/when to pay the fees to avoid nasty surprises and more. A Ryanair trip report should absolutely include mention of the ridiculous fee to print a BP at the counter, for example. So should Spirit, probably, though the fee isn't quite as high.

Even a business class TR would mostly be, "There was a seat and some food; the plane didn't crash," if that's all you want to write. But that doesn't mean that's all that happened.

I tend to not write TRs on most my flights, regardless of cabin. I do when it is something new to me or where there's a fun/new/different/interesting side note to the trip. But that's about all.

kokonutz

exactly!

When I google up research for an upcoming trip FlyerTalk is often the only resource that has what I need. But when a blog does have what I need I bookmark it and poke around a little. Is that really not worth the effort!?

Commenters on many of the blogs I do read literally beg for business rather than first class airport and flight experience reviews. But the focus is squarely of award travel in F.

Oh well. Thank goodness for FlyerTalk.

sbm12

I dunno...there's plenty of "we don't fly in Y" on FT, too. And I find it equally obnoxious here.

kokonutz

True. But also lots of Y trip reports.

Part of the issue, I suspect, is that some bloggers have to keep their cred up. Writing about a Y (or for some even business class) experience would undermine their 'anyone can achieve aspirational travel by clicking on my affiliate credit card links' business model.

That said, I see Gary just posted a review of the new AA business class seat....MIA-DFW. lol.

Ugh. Then he blows that proletarian cred by bashing Holiday Inn today. While I am staying at the Holiday Inn Lido Beach.

Astrophsx

http://thepointsguy.com/2015/07/dubai-layover-guide/

Interesting comment on this article:
"Is this a paid ad by DXB? Seems like it. For anyone who has transited through DXB Terminal 1, this post will come across as misleading and outright deceiving. Its a ghetto. Worst than a thrild world airport and the First lounges are a joke - horrible. awful terminal with NO redeeming qualities. They get sites like these to post glossy articles, while the reality is far from it (as with all things Dubai). Ughh place."

After glossing over a few articles written by "TPG Contributor" Lane Nieset I noticed that no photos taken by the author are included. The articles are written in a style of what you'd find in your generic in-flight magazine, Frommers, or Lonely Planet guide, or maybe even a travel brochure.

Either TPG is getting paid to feature certain cities/hotels or he wants to transform his website into a Yahoo Travel style site sprinkled with referral links.

sbm12

This is not the first time such "destination reporting" has shown up. I seem to recall that there was a post a while back about a German city which was mostly WikiTravel-based recommendations.

If the person providing the details does not demonstrate a personal experience I immediately discount it. I'm guessing not everyone does the same.

SJC AA

Check out this one:
http://thepointsguy.com/2015/07/abc-kitchen-new-york/

Nearly contentless review? Check.

Blurry photos? Check.

Awkward credit card plug? Check!

glennaa11

Personally I find most "trip reports" that only focus on the airport lounges, airplane seat, food, and big chain hotels pretty boring. The destination is much more important to me. The F or even C seat on airline X is pretty much the same whatever the route. Same with lounges. And generic big chain hotels. But I guess there must be people out there who do care about that sort of thing for some reason.

cruisr

the article read as if it were a press release from the restaurant. It seemed an advertorial piece as opposed to an editorial piece.

sbm12

Why? Why would I read the site any more?

I know that the content is crap so I don't bother. There is nothing insightful, unique or valuable coming out so I save my time and energy and ignore it. I cannot think of the last time I went to the TPG site.

What I don't understand is why more people - especially the ones here kvetching - don't do the same.
There are absolutely people who care about that stuff. But this is also why I would never call most of the people writing points & programs "travel bloggers" as they do not really cover what most of travel is about.

skunker

How about this?
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milea...dme-399-a.html
Great that they teamed up with SQ for a special deal, but it earns little to no miles. Maybe they should change the blog to The No Points Guy.