TRIPADVISOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE? 400 EUROS LESS IN POCKET...
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TRIPADVISOR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE? 400 EUROS LESS IN POCKET...
Photo Source: Gaetano Sciacca
Well yes... we succumbed to the "system"! Despite our enormous concerns about it , at the end of the month of In August 2019, we were persuaded to shell out around 400 euros for the TripAdvisor Business Advantage package. What would we have liked to achieve? Visibility in the default ranking of TripAdvisor, that is the one relating to the quality / price ratio. Before entering into the contract, to the Business Development Sales Executive from whom we were contacted and subsequently also to the Senior Customer Success Executive, we explicitly expressed the sole need to have visibility in the default sort order. We were therefore told that the Business Advantage package would give us the opportunity to insert our own Special Offer that would allow us to be included in the ranking according to the quality/price ratio . Was that actually the case? No, because whoever pays more actually precedes us.
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How does it really work? In hindsight (and thinking about how many arancini we could have bought with 400 euros), I tried to better understand the mechanism. Despite the extremely favorable score given by the average of the reviews (currently 5 out of 5), to be among the first positions in that system, you must have entered into a contract with a certified partner of TripAdvisor, that is one of the many Online Travel Agency (for example Booking, Expedia, Hotels, Trivago). For those who are really white on the subject, these are intermediary multinational agencies to which the management of reservations for all or part of their accommodation is delegated, for certain periods, to which a commission (on average 15%) is owed for every booking was successful. This is what TripAdvisor calls CPC Campaign.
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The "problem" is that so far at Agricultural Camp Sophia we have never had the need to let others manage "our home". We have our website, we have our online booking system, "business" doesn't go so badly... What reason would we have to entrust the management of reservations for our bungalows to an OTA? No reason and instead many good reasons to continue to reserve the possibility to decide what we consider most appropriate on our structure and not having to give explanations to anyone if we decide to make, for example, a discount to a customer.
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Searching, for example, on Google ("incognito" mode) "camping Syracuse", in third position we find the ungrammatical link of TripAdvisor "The best 10 camping in Province of Syracuse in 2019 (with prices)". By clicking on it you will find yourself on the TripAdvisor page entitled "Camping a Provincia di Siracusa". The default ordering is according to the criterion of the relationship between quality and price. Our special offer (of which the novelty is that the price is no longer shown) is absolutely (and intentionally, to test if these 400 euros have been well spent) the most convenient. The score determined by the average of the reviews, by selecting the order for Traveler ranking, gives us, at the end of December 2019, the first place in the ranking. If mathematics is not an opinion, Agricultural Sophia, with a special offer lower than the prices proposed by the competitors, should not be in first place also in the sorting for Quality- price? And here the donkey falls ... Because the Agricultural Camp Sophia will always come after the structures that decide to join a certified partner of TripAdvisor. And pay 400 euros for the site link and the phone number on TripAdvisor (when the most immediate source for this information is the free Google...), choose the order of the photos or the "favorite review" (which among the 'other seems to me really a prank...), for a small company, in my humble opinion, it is almost equivalent to throwing money. I would like to point out the interesting opinion , from a few years ago but still currently, of the owners of the Preggio Organic Farm, on the usefulness of OTAs for a family-sized farm.
Text Source: Antonino Rampulla
ARCHIVE NEWS
DO YOU WANT TO ORGANIZE AN ERASMUS AT AGRICAMPING SOPHIA? DO YOU WANT TO ORGANIZE AN ERASMUS AT AGRICAMPING SOPHIA?
WHAT IS AGRICAMPING SOPHIA? It is a campsite with tent pitches, glamping tents, mobile homes and bungalows WHERE IS IT? In Italy, in Sicily, near Syracuse, in Pachino: 36.736883, 15.095610 HOW TO CONTACT US? info@agricampingsophia.it (SPEAK ENGLISH) +39 3473079242 – (ONLY SPEAK ITALIAN) +39 3452396095 WHAT DO WE OFFER? We offer hospitality and catering for Erasmus projects FOR HOW MANY PEOPLE? We can have 4-7 single beds in the Socrate Bungalow, 6-10 single beds in the Platone Mobile Homes, 4-6 single beds in the Aristotele Mobile Homes, 4 single beds in the Iblone Mobile Homes, 4 single beds in the single beds in the Empedocle Glamping Tents. In total we therefore have 18 comfortable single places or 31 single places with a fair spirit of adaptation. IN WHICH PERIOD CAN AGRICAMPING SOPHIA BE AVAILABLE? The most suitable periods to use our services...
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Read also RACK OR HOUSING FOR CLOGS? Some cart ruts from the Targia district, in Syracuse, and most of the cart ruts from Granatari Vecchi, in Rosolini, give the impression of having been impressed, modelled, on a rock that was originally viscous, not entirely solid. As absurd as this hypothesis may seem, especially in Granatari Vecchi, the softness of the shapes and the at least anomalous uniformity of the rock bank, as if it were a concrete casting, which hosts the cart ruts, is unicum compared to the lithic context in the area. In Targia this phenomenon is less impressive but if we consider the cart ruts essentially cart tracks, therefore furrowed roads indirectly resulting from the repeated passage of carts along the same route, we do not understand why such uniformity and smoothness is present, in the majority of cases, also on the parts not affected by the passage of the...
RACK OR HOUSING FOR CLOGS? RACK OR HOUSING FOR CLOGS?
Read also CART RUTS CUT FROM QUARRIES In the presence of slopes, even slight ones, in some cart ruts in the Targia district, in Syracuse, central holes are found with a diameter of between 30 and 50 centimeters and a depth of 15-20 centimeters, spaced about 50 centimeters apart. Neither the position (they are not exactly in the center of the cart ruts and perfectly aligned with each other), nor the shape appear perfectly regular: either the passage of time and any wear have profoundly modified their original shape or, simply, they have never had a systematic regularity. However, the offset in position between one hole and another is never completely “off-axis”: there is always a portion about twenty centimeters wide that coincides with the same portion of the previous and subsequent hole. The best preserved and most defined holes are found in the cart ruts usually called Scala...
CART RUTS CUT FROM QUARRIES CART RUTS CUT FROM QUARRIES
Back to CART RUTS AND A FEW TOO MANY PROJECTIONS I will skip any preamble, referring to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily. The easy academic tendency has been, in most cases concerning cart ruts, to consider them in terms of the latomie, or quarries, with which very often (for example in the cases of the Targia or Pizzuta districts) they share the same territory. According to this theory, the carraie would have been indirectly created due to the wear of the rock at each passage of carts or sleds loaded with extracted stone blocks. I will not repeat the arguments presented so far in order to demonstrate that this is a theory that has little solid foundations on an in-depth analysis of the cart ruts. However, I will add a piece by demonstrating the implausibility of a connection between them in both chronological and functional...
CART RUTS AND A FEW TOO MANY PROJECTIONS CART RUTS AND A FEW TOO MANY PROJECTIONS
Read also THE POLISHING OF THE CART RUTS I will skip any preamble, referring to to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily.Considering the possibility that the cart ruts were gradually dug by the passage of carts pulled by pack animals, for example pairs of oxen, observing certain sections of the cart ruts present in the Granatari Vecchi district, in Rosolini, and in the Pizzuta district, close to the Vendicari Reserve, two questions arise: 1. Why force the animals to pass over rough surfaces and protrusions high, compared to the base of the furrows, even 60-70 centimeters? 2. Why, in the presence of such obstacles, not opt for a detour? For Mottershead, Pearson and Schaefer such protrusions appeared later, since at the time of the passage of the wagons, a layer of earth covered the rocky bank, thus not making the obstacle...
THE POLISHING OF THE CART RUTS THE POLISHING OF THE CART RUTS
Read also THE PROBLEMATIC EDGES OF THE CART RUTS I will skip any preamble, referring to to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily. To proceed with this comparison I have chosen a probable capital and the corner of a recess present in a block of the northern walls of Eloro that would seem to resemble a pinax, that is, a niche that would have housed a fresco of the heroa, but which a more careful observation refers to a system functional to the grip of the block through a pincer winch. Both elements, like the curt ruts, have remained at the mercy of the elements for millennia, and are therefore subject to comparable wear and tear due to the passage of time. The finishing of the capital should be of a high standard, since it is an architectural element that also has an aesthetic function. The recess, on the other hand, should have...
THE PROBLEMATIC EDGES OF THE CART RUTS THE PROBLEMATIC EDGES OF THE CART RUTS
I will skip any preamble, referring to to what has already been written regarding the presence of cart ruts in south-eastern Sicily.As can be seen in other sites around the world, in some cart ruts I visited, in particular in the Cugni district in Pachino, in the Granati Vecchi district in Rosolini and in the Targia district in Syracuse, a clear border can be seen, a sort of frame, next to the grooves, more marked externally, barely noticeable internally. The borders I measured have a width of 14-20 centimeters and a height of 8-10 centimeters. Not all cart ruts have such frames present or particularly evident, regardless of the degree of wear or degradation. They are found above all in cart ruts with less deep grooves. As already described in detail, given the presence of furrows with a depth of even 65-70 centimeters, the wheels of a possible vehicle would have had to have a...
THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART FOUR) THE PROBLEM OF CART RUTS IN SOUTH-EASTERN SICILY (PART FOUR)
Click here to return to third part Clapham Junction As in the Maltese site Misrah Ghar Il-Kbir, also in the Targia and Granatari Vecchi districts the cart ruts intersect and cross each other in a similar way to the track switches in a railway station. The nickname Clapham Junction that was given by David H. Trump to the Maltese site, derives precisely from the similarity with the famous English railway station. For Sagona these are agricultural furrows and water channels, for Mottershead, Pearson and Schaefer these are abandoned paths due to obstacles and wear. Obviously we do not know what the morphology of the Syracuse and Rosolini territory was at times when the cart ruts were traced, but considering the current context, there certainly would have been no agricultural reason to build them, given the presence of fertile land, springs and fresh water courses just a few kilometers...