Originally Posted by
gpeso8
Perhaps a dedicated thread will be needed then.
I noticed some of the comments are giving him grief for taking this trip instead of spending time with his 7-month old child. I don't know what other "business" he was doing in Asia but I know if I had the option of spending more time with my child and family that would be the most important thing for me, not impressing the blog community.
Originally Posted by
Jesperss
Hah, thought i was the only one creeped out by his blog picture
Guy has a newborn...it is odd him leaving his wife and the child to go cause a scene at an airline counter halfway around the world for no reason. There could be other reasons besides entitlement at play here...
The pic is creepy - not sure if it's the filter/effects that were applied to it but he looks comatose or something.
As far as I can tell from the blog posts, his only other purpose in going to BKK was to be the first to review the new Park Hyatt there. Oddly, his new contributing writer also stayed at the same hotel, at the same time, and the contributor's post went up before Matthew's (oh, not counting the "quick look" post earlier).
His retort to the comments about leaving the family behind is that traveling and doing reviews is the core of his blogging business and lots of people have to travel for work even with a baby at home. All true of course, but especially since he had a contributor staying there for the opening weekend as well - other than pride, what point was there in Matthew flying all the way there to add another review of the same property simultaneously? And come on, it's a
Park Hyatt. I'm skeptical that the trip would have happened in the end, were it not for this quest to battle Ethiopian.
Originally Posted by
Raffles
Wonder what the business model is now for airline focused sites? From what I can see, the credit card companies have pulled up the drawbridge on giving new sites links and keep culling the existing ones. You need 1m page views a month before your ad revenue hits $5k per month, and BA will want their 50% cut of that. I struggle to see what he is aiming for, unless it is a Ben-style profile or a sale to Bankrate.
Must be shooting for one or both of the last two things you mentioned? He does have an award booking service as well. Wonder if he thought this little stunt would get picked up by some news outlet and generate some viral buzz for his quixotic battle as some sort of Elliott.org wannabe?
When I first noticed this blog on BA I liked it and thought it had potential for being useful and pretty active with content. Not so much now.