Reviews – Just how much notice should you pay?

Our website is awash with a huge amount of review from customers who have sailed on practically every ship imaginable. In fact, on checking this morning there are over 2704 pages of the things. As we live in a society that seems incapable of buying something without reading what other people though, I thought I would do a bit of digging and see if they were all they are cracked up to be. It took me just 3 clicks to see that maybe we should not really pay as much attention to reviews as we do, especially with cruises.

The main reason for this is that we are all completely different and all have different expectations for our cruises. I personally love a new big ship, however, there are many of you out there that love small ship cruising. Having been in the industry for 15 years I have had all kinds of feedback regarding certain ships and I have to say, as a whole most of you have a wonderful experience and thoroughly enjoy the cruise you decided to book. Now there are obviously niggles on some trips which can lead to complaints, same as any industry, but looking through the long page of reviews, I stumbled across these 2. They were on the same sailing, yet 1 gives 1 star and the other gives 4? HOW!!

The thing that jumped out at me was the number of views each review had received. In fact, it pleased me to see 4938 people had viewed the positive review versus just 50 viewing the negative, maybe we aren’t as “doom and gloom” as we think we are.

So, how much attention do you pay to reviews or are you just happy to book on the deal/itinerary that is right for you. Personally, I’d happily give anything a try!