Back in March 2009, I had an occasion to need to stay at a hotel I booked through Hotwire.com. The hotel was nice enough, but there were a few things that were a bit peculiar. For one, they did not offer dry cleaning services, which is odd for any hotel and particularly one not far from a major airport that allegedly caters to business travelers. The other odd thing, was the hotel had a DJ playing house music in the lobby bar. It was extremely loud, but the sound did not reach the floors above, so it was fine really, unless you wanted to relax in the bar with a drink and enjoy typical hotel bar conversation or watch a game on the TV. In any event, after submitting a review shortly after I stayed, I just received an e-mail from Hotwire telling me that the review I submitted was not appropriate and needed to be changed because I mentioned policies of the hotel. I thought this odd, so I went back to Hotwire to see what I had submitted. Clearly, I did not mention any “policies” of the hotel, but rather just pointed out a few of the peculiarities and suggested that if you were looking for business accommodations you might be better off elsewhere.

Here is a screenshot of a portion of the e-mail I received:

Now here is the review I submitted:

Great place, not much immediately around the hotel though. In the evenings they did have DJ music in the lobby bar, which seemed like a low-key club setting. There was a very good exercise room, and a pool. The hotel does not offer dry cleaning services, which was surprising. So if you are traveling on business this might not be the best choice. I always like to get my shirts and suit pressed to look my best, but that was not an option, so I had to make do with an ironing board and no starch. The room had a mini-refrigerator, king bed and a desk, which was reasonably comfortable. There was no easy chair though, so watching TV at night was either in bed or in the desk chair. For the rate I managed to get on Hotwire it was great, but I suspect if I had paid the full rate for this hotel I would have been extremely disappointed.

Here is the non-responsive e-mail I received from Hotwire Customer Service when I informed them they had made an error and that nothing I said mentioned any hotel policies:

Thank you for contacting us to express your concerns regarding your survey. Customer feedback is an important component in ensuring quality products and services at Hotwire. Our goal is to exceed your expectations and we regret we did not do so on this occasion. We hope to have the opportunity to better serve your needs in the near future. If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to reply to this email or contact us directly at 1-866-XXX-XXXX. Thank you for choosing Hotwire. Sincerely,

This is obviously sent by someone who didn’t read my e-mail sent to Hotwire, or perhaps just picked a standard non-responsive e-mail reply from a list of canned choices. In any event, I am not going to correct the review because I am not about to waste time trying to dumb down a fair, accurate and informative review, particularly without knowing what the problem with the review is. Furthermore, the closest that I come to doing that is probably that they offer no dry cleaning services, but quite honestly that was the entire reason I wrote the review in the first place. As a frequent business traveler, when I travel to places I am not familiar with I always like to try and get some sense of the hotel from various reviews. If you are in town to visit friends, family or site-seeing this hotel was great, but for those on business who might want to be able to be able to get a shirt or suit pressed or cleaned, you better have a car and a map to get to the nearest dry cleaner. Likewise, after a long day it is always nice to get a drink in the hotel bar and relax a bit, but if you are not into loud DJ music that would be difficult to accomplish.

So all of this makes me wonder what exactly the value is in Hotwire reviews? I have had some good experiences with Hotwire, but many not so good experiences, and perhaps this is why. It is no wonder the reviews are all spectacular and then you get to the hotel and see it is not at all like what you were lead to believe. It would seem that Hotwire has a bias against legitimate but potentially unfavorable reviews and opinions. It is their site and business, and they can do whatever the like, but I can to and I think it is important that people know they cannot trust Hotwire reviews because potentially negative reviews are weeded out.

I typically, as a rule, no longer use Hotwire because I think classifying Comfort Inn as a 3 star hotel is disingenuous, which actually happened to me once. Nevertheless, when I am only going to be in a place for a few days and I need a quick, cheap room I have given in to the price point temptation presented by Hotwire. Knowing that the reviews on Hotwire need to pass some kind of uncertain and ill defined acceptability review means I will just steer clear of Hotwire from now on.

So what does this have to do with intellectually property? Perhaps not much as IPWatchdog readers are typically accustomed to in my writing, but it is certainly an Internet related story, and I am going to try and write more about that where appropriate. Also, if you have a business and you want you Trademark to remain valuable you need to make sure you are not doing anything particularly silly or stupid to waste such an important asset. Perhaps Hotwire is trying to become synonymous with really cheap, not so good and/or “interesting” hotels that for one reason or another, whether ongoing construction, newness or weirdness, have rooms that cannot be filled. Your mileage may vary, but that is exactly what I think of when I hear “Hotwire,” and I can’t believe that is a good thing for their long term viability, particularly if others also feel the same way.