Originally Posted by
mahasamatman
I had never used Foursquare before this promo. It took about three seconds to figure it out. The real problem is that anyone can create a location with any name anywhere they want. And even some of the "official" locations are miles from the actual location.
My issue was my first check-in did not have the "Special" tag on it nor did I know to look for such a tag. My second check-in (to a different hotel hundreds of miles away) had the "Special" tag and I thought about the first one. At that point, I simply thought the first property simply didn't participate in the promotion, as they had no marketing materials in the lobby and SPG did not publish a list about participating properties (as they normally would have some type of statement, as many have complained here about).
This is definitely an issue with foursquare, but SPG could do a much, MUCH better job on "spelling it out" for those of us that are new to the platform. In my case, the first hotel I checked in at had 5 venues ... the official one was the 4th most popular (and was 14x less popular than the first one listed when checking in). SPG should honor all check-ins that were performed at non-official venues due to their liberal assumptions and lack of descriptive information on this promotion ... still waiting to see if that will happen, though.