[Anonymous]

[eirtraveller]

Am thinking, perhaps, should BT magazine be retitled “Business Hotel Traveller” instead? In the past number of issues there have been almost no flight reviews and countless hotel reviews. In my case, as I suspect many others, the flight reviews are what drew me here in the first place. The likelihood of my ever going to the ‘X’ Hotel in Hong Kong etc. pales into insignificance compared to what flights we all may take and on what airlines.

TripAdvisor and its like are fine for hotel research – I don’t think BT brings much to the table. However, if we travel as we do, the airline reviews are genuinely a source of knowledge and information.

Please, BT: refocus.

[batraveller2]

I have to disagree. I am sitting in the BA lounge at Aberdeen and was lucky to get the March magazine (as they dont always seem to be in Scotland), and I have very much enjoyed reading about London hotels, and found that it had a good balance – after all there was a review of BA premium economy also, and an excellent article on fifth freedom airlines.

[FrequentTraveller]

I use Trip Advisor a lot for researching hotels for personal travel. But as it has a general consumer audience base, many of the review focus on whether the hotel was value for money for leisure travel. Not always considering the specific needs of business travellers. Where as BT is aimed at business travellers.

[Tom Otley]

Thank you for your post.

In fact we review more flights than hotels, but we tend to print only reviews of new products in the magazine, and put the flight reviews online.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/tried-and-tested/airlines

If you look at this link there are reviews of everything from bmi and British Airways to Oman Air, Jet Airways and IndiGo. It would be wonderful if we could include more of these in the magazine, and we do try and get a mix, but sometimes it takes a while to get around to reviewing new products.

Trip Advisor is useful, but I think our reviews are far more detailed and fair. I think if you read our reviews, and then read the Trip Advisor reviews, you would have a good sense of whether the hotel is worth staying in or not.

I am aware, though, that we should try and keep a balance between flight reviews and hotels, so we’ll see what we can get in over the next few months.

Many thanks

Tom Otley
Editor

NB: I should also add that we have excellent reviews from our forum posters and subscribers – this one was interesting

http://www.businesstraveller.com/discussion/topic/Aer-Lingus-A330-301-Premier

[NTarrant]

Part of being a business traveller is staying in hotels, just as much as flying, unless you only go on day trips. Whilst there are a number of hotel reviews in places I personally are unlikely to visit, there are reviews on hotels in places I do. Overall BT gives a good balance.

I would agree with FrequentTraveller about Tripadvisor being more leisure orientated than business. I have found that sometimes it is better to look at the Tripadvisor reviews after staying. The comments can be very subjective rather than objective. I do leave comments on Tripadvisor but always be objective.

[VintageKrug]

It would be great for BT to review some of the US Domestic “longhaul” offerings, especially Virgin America and Jetblue especially now these are more closely aligned to V:Australia/Virgin Atlantic and American Airlines respectively to see just how joined up these offerings are.

Increasingly, it’s not just about on board comfort and service, which are becoming somewhat commoditised, but rather the overall offering from tansit arrangements, through ticketing, codeshares and interlining of bags. Connectivity in the lounge and on board is also more important (though I am not a fan personally).

[robsmith100]

Another area which would be most welcome, are reviews of using long distance european / international trains services between countries other than Eurostar.

[BusinessTraveller]

Thanks for the posts on this subject – it’s all interesting feedback. A few comments:

VintageKrug – we’ve noted your requests for a review of Virgin America / JetBlue services. It’s certainly something we’d like to do, but you’ll appreciate that reviewing domestic US services is not as easy as carrying out reviews of flights departing from London (in the case of the UK edition), or Hong Kong (in the case of our Asia-Pacific edition). But it’s certainly something we’ll keep in mind should the opportunity arise.

Robsmith100 – our consumer editor Alex McWhirter is currently writing a piece looking at air versus rail options within Europe, which will be published in our May 2011 issue.

In terms of flight reviews in the magazine, Tom has pretty much covered this point above, but i just wanted to flag up that we will be publishing two Emirates reviews (covering the London-Dubai service) online in the next week or so.

We will also be publishing a review of Nigerian carrier Arik Air’s offering on the London-Lagos route in the next couple of months.

Kind Regards,

Mark Caswell

[BlackTower]

Still think setting up a “Club Sandwich Index” covering costy/quality would be a useful cost of travelling comparator and get BT editorial in the general press. Not least The Economist owners of the Big Mac Index.

Us travellers can populate the database for you

[Tom Otley]

That’s an interesting idea BlackTower. How would it work?

[eirtraveller]

Thanks for your reply and suggestions BT – I am not ‘having a go’ at the publication, but as a subscriber, it’s nice to know our thoughts are listened to and direct feedback from BT editorial is very impressive.

[Tom Otley]

Thank you.

We would much rather have feedback – negative and positive – than no feedback at all.

[FirstClassWannabe]

I really enjoy reading the flight reviews above anything else, I look forward to the Arik Air review. I hope the Emirates review will include a flight in Y on the 10 abreast 777. It would be good to see a review on Iberia long haul as well. I think what Blacktower may be referring to is something BT did many years ago in the eighties. The back of the issue always included a price index showing the cost of various items around the world such as a night in a hotel, price of a coffee, duty free etc and it made interesting reading. Moscow and Tokyo were always the most expensive cities in the world. Be good to see that back in BT.

[MartynSinclair]

How about a report on travel insurance for the business man/women and children…………..

[Author]

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