Cruise Ship Passenger Reviews
The Internet has become something of a democratiser over the past few years, allowing people to post online their opinions, thoughts, feelings and plans, and to have their voices heard in a way that could never have been imagined prior to the advent of the Internet as a mass media tool. This has led to a proliferation of information from many thousands of sources, some of which is excellent and makes one wonder how we survived before the Internet and some of which is of such staggeringly poor quality that it makes you wish CERN would take back the entire network in one fell swoop and save us all from the views of people who are really quite ill-equipped to diffuse their views.
One sphere in which the move towards a mass information movement has been incredibly useful, and makes the Internet nigh on indispensable, is in the realm of consumer reviews. If you are planning a holiday and want to know how other people’s experiences have gone in the same place, with the same carrier, or at the same price, then the Internet is right there to allow you to find all that information in the space of a few clicks and presses. The advantage of this is that you can get right to the nub of matters and benefit from other people’s experiences.
There are two main kinds of review sites – the critic-based review site, on which the reviews are written by somebody who is paid to experience a service and report back on how good it was, and the consumer review site. The latter is a more recent development, and has been one of the real success stories of recent years. The magic of consumer reviews, for many, is that the people giving their opinions and the benefit of their experiences are “people just like us”. People who are paid to review something will often receive the service or the goods free of charge, or at a vastly reduced rate, and may even benefit from an expense account. The “consumer” review is a review from a service user who has paid out of their own pocket for the experience, and if they have been anything other than satisfied then they may have a legitimate grudge.
On the flipside to this, if having paid for a holiday the passenger reports back saying how great it was, then you can set quite a bit of store by it. No-one is going to be happy to have paid for a cruise if it was anything other than genuinely impressive. Thus a passenger review will, for many, carry greater weight than a professional review.
There is a counter-argument to this, of course, which is that passenger (or any consumer-) review sites can often be used as a front for a marketer to “plant” a good review for a service in the knowledge that people are more likely to view it as unbiased. As in all things, exercising some caution is a good way of operating. If you see a series of good reviews for a product or service, then the likelihood is that they are genuine. The only way you can be surer is to just go and see for yourself.
Caterina Christakos is published author and reviewer. Read her latest reviews of dolce and gabbana eyewear and joico hair products.
Author: Caterina Christakos
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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