#Microblog Monday 471: Recommendation Fever
Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.
*******
Yes, I clicked on some to see what places they recommended, but travel hot lists feel ridiculous. How can you recommend an entire country? Or city? It’s not a book where everyone is delivered the same story between covers. Or even a restaurant with a finite number of dishes on the menu. Or a hotel where the location and amenities remain the same, regardless of the room. In all of those situations, your mileage may vary for many reasons. But an entire city? How can two people have similar experiences in the same place unless they follow the same itinerary?
I felt vindicated by the randomness of the lists.
*******
Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.
2 comments
They write the lists because they’re clickbait, and expected since someone wrote the first one (probably Lonely Planet) 40 years ago! lol But yes, they’re very random. I do think you can recommend an entire city (Paris, London, New York, DC, Singapore, etc) or even country – Italy, for example, or Slovenia, or Japan, or … dare I say it … New Zealand! Where you’ll go and what you’ll do will vary, and so it certainly all depends on your interests, budget (eg. Iceland and Norway are great but very expensive), etc. And time you want to visit. Also, most of these lists are heavily US- or UK-centric, based on transport links, interests, knowledge, etc. And then getting into the whole sustainability thing is a complete can of worms, as they pointed out.
That said, these lists can mean a lot to small places that might reap an economic boost as a result. And I do read these articles, just in case I find something or somewhere mentioned that might interest me. Like anything, it’s useful to pick and choose based on your own preferences.
I was reading reviews of resorts, trying to find a vacation spot. I generally discount the good reviews – it’s nice to know people had a good time, and if I decide to go there, I can refer back to them to see who the good servers and bartenders and such are. But in choosing I need to know who had a bad time, what their complaint was, and whether or not I can live with it. So, the hype machine does nothing for me – a few pictures, and filtering complaints through my “people are terrible and complain about everything” lens is what I need to choose a place to go.