Recently, I read a blog post of Jackie Huba’s Blog on a hotel that decided to fine its customers 500 dollars for every negative review they put online. According to Huba, this has been a longstanding policy of Union Street Guest House, a New York hotel. This sparked some thoughts in my mind- why is this long standing policy a bad decision now, and not before?

The fact that it was long standing indicates that such policy did not previously spark such customer complaints. This made me wonder how it is that the same policy can spark such different reactions as time passes. In such case, I believe the development of technology posed as a threat to the hotel. With the improvement of social media, consumers can easily reach a wide network of audience to complain about a certain company. The same happened to Union Street Guest House, when customers began to complain online, and the media decided to cover it.

Customers began to post negative ratings on Yelp, just to mock the decision Union Street Guest House has made. This taught be quite a bit about making decisions. Preventing customers to write negative reviews may yield positive results in the short term. However, a “good” company must consider its long term implications.

Jackie’s blog post can be found here.