AZ Travels the World

We are happy to report that the FlyerTalk ‘powers-that-be’ have selected the Starwood Preferred Guest forum to participate in a pilot program to experiment with the use of photographs within the threads of the forum. Effective now, photos can be embedded in your posts! Here is an example from the Trip Reports forum of a thread containing photos.

That’s the good news. The ‘other’ news is that it is not an especially simple thing to do. We point you to this thread in the Travel Photography forum for all the technical guidance as to how posting a photo can be accomplished. When reading the referenced thread, all you have to do is mentally substitute “Starwood Forum” every time you read ‘Travel Photography Forum’ (‘TPF’ for short). Our fellow moderator, sbm12, did an exceptional job of laying out options and instructions.

The two of us will be the first to admit that the technical aspects of this initiative are outside our ‘core competencies,’ so we will leave this thread open for discussion amongst all of you as to the best approaches for posting your prize-winning hotel bathroom shots.

Naturally, there are a few rules associated with posting pictures within your threads.

• Photos should be related to the topic at hand: Starwood hotels. The purpose of this concept is to enable you to illustrate with a photo something hotel-related that would otherwise take a thousand words.

• All the Rules of FlyerTalk apply. So decency, staying on topic, protection of privacy, etc. are as applicable with photos as they are with words. Granted, this is a bit of new territory for FT and the Starwood forum, so we will be evaluating any issues and concerns as they come up. It’s all part of the pilot concept.

If, after reading the thread mentioned above, you have questions about ‘how to’ do something, feel free to post it here. More importantly, if you have answers, please feel obligated to post them here.

If you have concerns about something, or take issue with a specific photo that has been posted, these issues are best addressed via Private Message to one or both of us, or by using the “Report Bad Post” icon in the lower left-hand corner of every post in the forum.

This will be an interesting test process and we look forward to experiencing the journey with you.

AZ Travels the World & l'etoile
SPG Forum Moderators

KENNECTED

YES!!!! ^^^^

Writing a review that includes pictures, just became so much easier!

Perfect timing as I'm sitting on a couple of reviews.

Thanks!!!

Forstbetrieb

Great idea!!!

Sometimes a photo says more then 1000 words.

bocastephen

Great idea!

Now we can start the countdown to our first "here is a photo of the pee stain on the carpet in the <insert name of SW hotel> room I checked into."

Seriously, it will be great to see a real-person photo perspective of many of the properties we discuss in the forum.

i love snowboarding

Fantastic news! This will definitely enrich the forum. Thanks so much!

itsaboutthejourney

^^ This is wonderful news. I'm glad "the powers that be" are listening!

KENNECTED

BS we already have thread like or similar to that situation. See one of my reports from NoLa.

thor17

Is that really embedding a picture in a post? The example looks like just linking to pictures (that I still have to click on). Is this feature supposed to show the pictures in the post, or just links to the pictures? If the latter, how is that different from before?

SanDiego1K

I'm a little puzzled by your comment. Did you look at this trip report?

Or take a look at the Travel Photography's thread Room with a View.

And here's Beautiful images...just because.

QF009 is an active poster in this forum. Look at his current trip report for some great images. Here is his photo record of the W Honolulu.

thor17

Ok, for those that can't see the pictures in the post itself, make sure you have "Show Images" checked in the "Thread Display Options" under "MyFlyerTalk". I didn't even realize that there was such an option and that it was unchecked in my account. No wonder I was only seeing hyperlinks to images and not the images themselves!

serfty

Testing:

snufl

Thanks! I can see them now.

SanDiego1K

I just spotted a picture in the Bangkok general discussion thread. Thank you, Moomba.

cheepneezy has added pictures to the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass, Phoenix, Master thread.

Anglo Large Clawed Otter

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

u600213

Cool. And I salute this capability with these pictures of progress in working my way through the complimentary mini-bar in my room at Le Meridian Stuttgart