How to spot tainted travel advice
Check your sources. That's not just a cardinal rule of journalism but also of travel planning. Make sure you get your travel advice from someone knowledgeable and unbiased.
Whom can you trust? The holiday travel planning season is in full swing, and shoddy advice surrounds you. Guidebooks, blogs and businesses are all too willing to tell you where to go and what to buy, but their advice can be influenced by freebies, bonuses or outright incompetence.
"Most of the so-called great advice is actually pretty terrible," says Kelsey Tonner, founder of the Be a Better Guide Project, a site that helps train tour guides.
Superlatives are a tip-off in his line of work. "If someone breathlessly tells you about an amazing experience or a special place and is pushing you to book on the spot, there's a pretty good chance they are getting a commission, kickback or helping out a friend," he says.
Where are the victims, then? Fair question. In fact, there are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of casualties of the tainted advice out there — and they don't even know it. They have no idea their trip could have been so much better if they'd listened to the right source.
Terrible advice about credit cards may be the biggest problem. Many blogs that claim to be written by travel "experts" are actually online ads that try to tempt you to sign up for a specific card.
Often they promise big bonuses by instructing users about an ethically dubious practice called manufactured spending. Here's how the trick works: You sign up for a card, then buy items only for the bonus points you collect with each purchase. You then return or liquidate the merchandise, pocketing the points. If done carelessly, this questionable strategy for collecting miles could put you deep into debt, not to mention beholden to your chosen loyalty program.
Tim Winship, who publishes the site Frequentflier.com, says the shills behind these sites receive hundreds of dollars for each card they sell, which dictates their editorial agenda.
"So much of what now passes for travel advice on the Web is compromised by these writers' financial self-interest," he says.
The Federal Trade Commission requires bloggers to disclose their affiliate relationships, but the cleverest credit card shills have figured out a way around this. They reveal these ties in much the same way tobacco companies publish warnings on a carton of cigarettes: in plain view but in an unmemorable font they know the reader won’t notice.
Stuart McDonald, who publishes a respected travel blog called Travelfish.org, says an honest disclosure commands the same attention as the editorial content. In his site's case, he recently redesigned his pages to give the warnings more prominence, denoting each link with a dollar sign next to it.
"Affiliate links need to be disclosed to the reader, so they know what they're doing," he says.
Tainted tips for personal enrichment are just one source of bad advice. Another is garden-variety incompetence. That's the kind of travel advice Paula Miller got from her community bank before she visited Paris recently. She wanted to know if her debit card would work in France. A bank representative said it would not and advised her to bring lots of cash on her trip and exchange it. Turns out the card worked and she wasted her money on a pointless exchange.
"Incredible ignorance from supposedly trained professionals," says Miller, an educator from Kitty Hawk, N.C.
Part of the problem is us. Somewhere along the way, American travelers lost their healthy sense of skepticism and began believing anyone with the word "expert" in their title. They didn't bother asking themselves how much these experts really knew or how they earned a living.
In Miller's case, the community bank may not have been the most authoritative resource about the compatibility of her debit card's network overseas.
When bloggers refer to themselves as "travel experts" or "thought leaders," who are we to question them? "Americans defer to experts," explains Michael Brein, a psychologist who specializes in travel issues. "If they say they're a guide or an expert or licensed or whatever, we tend to be too trusting and too readily willing to accept or take their word for it."
Perhaps we're reluctant to offend someone. One of the fastest ways to tick off a travel agent is to ask what his or her commission is on a cruise or all-inclusive vacation. Want to question the credibility of a guidebook author? Ask how many of the hotels reviewed offered "free" accommodations in exchange for a favorable mention.
Maybe it's time to start asking these questions. If you don't, the next casualty of this bad travel advice could be your vacation.
How to spot bad advice
• Everyone else says "no." If careful research shows numerous other sources contradicting the tips you’re researching, odds are the advice is compromised or simply inaccurate. Move on.
• Too many "-ests." Hyperbole is a red flag when it comes to bad advice. Anyone who claims they've found the "best" credit card or the "greatest" hotel may have a hidden agenda. Tread carefully.
• Follow the money. If you can't figure out how a so-called expert earns money, maybe there's more than meets the eye. For example, a "free" tour that conveniently leads you to a restaurant or gift shop suggests the tour guide earns a kickback from the business.
Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate and editor at large for National Geographic Traveler. Contact him at chris@elliott.org or visit elliott.org.