“There’s a seven-star hotel in Dubai with a load of one-star reviews on TripAdvisor,” says the philosophical lad on reception at the Broadway hotel in Blackpool. “You can’t please everyone.” He’s got a point: 28 visitors to the £1,400-a-night Burj Al Arab rated it as “terrible”, elaborating in varying degrees of illiteracy. “The TV had hardly any good channels they were mainly weird things in a different language!” mithered Sebastian S from London under the heading “APPAULING!”.
The difference is that the sheiks who own the Burj do not levy a fee of three times the nightly room rate on guests who post negative online reviews after their stay. That’s how the Broadway, a labyrinthine budget hotel in Blackpool’s South Shore area, made international news this week, when it emerged it had charged a couple from Cumbria £100 for slagging it off on TripAdvisor.
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