Suitable hotels
There needs to be something pretty unique or luxurious about the places you feature. They don’t have to be 5 star or super- expensive (although quality often does cost a fair whack) but they need to be unique in their design, ethos or standards.
We do feature other types of accommodation (chalets, boats, campsites!) if there’s a good enough reason to include it.
Avoid large chains or bland corporate monstrosities, just funky little boutiques or ‘wow’ factor dream hotels. Be careful of securing hotels which may suit your travel plans but have little else to make them stand out; you’ll struggle to overcome their mediocrity it comes to writing your review!
We really want this site to be somewhere people can rely on for a certain level of quality and uniqueness.
Style
Personality! We like quirky, humorous perspectives or an unusual angle. There are A LOT of bland, formulaic reviews out there so let’s make ours a little different. We want to grab the readers’ attention and make them want to come back to the site. We also need to give value to the hotels we are reviewing by showing that we really thought about the stay rather than just churning out the usual ‘blah blah’ type content! Opinions are fine as is personal preference, but try to keep things generally positive. We have a summary at the bottom of the page for easy reference ‘good’ and ‘bad’ points so do use these. Do be diplomatic however.
Content
In terms of structure we are looking for 150-300 words. So not very long at all to get your point across, which is why your photos need to be good.
Check your spelling and grammar for typos. Make sure your sentences are short and punchy.
Photos
Decent camera ideally, and something which again, differentiates us. If disaster strikes (it’s raining, you forget your memory card, your battery pack is stolen) we can use stock images from the hotel but prefer not to.
Bedroom, bathroom, view, any particular features or character of the hotel, surrounding area, special facilities, restaurant, food- take a look at our existing reviews to get a feel for which sort of photos work best and you would like to produce.
Obviously you’ll pick the shots that stand out- there’s no point including the bathroom if it’s a bit run of the mill but you would include the breakfast buffet if it’s exceptionally good.
Social media
Part of the pitch usually refers to social media so in the section of the database where you upload your reviews you’ll see boxes for posting your tweets etc.
Twitter
Tweets need to be short (obviously!)and catchy with relevant hashtags. You may wish to @ reference the hotel. We’ll need a minimum of 3 tweets- look at our twitter account @landbhotels for examples.
Facebook
For Facebook we just need a line which will go with the review when it’s posted. Again, make it catchy and look at facebook.com/luxuryandboutiquehotels for inspiration
Pinterest
When the hotel review goes live it gets added to our Pinterest board, but if you have any additional photos or content which you think would go perfectly then let us know.
Instagram
We’ve had trouble getting people to use this which is a shame as it’s a great way of sharing photos, and who doesn’t like to see pictures of amazing hotels and holiday locations?!
User name is: landbhotels
password: LUXhotels11
Feel free to add your best shots!
SEO
When you upload your review there is a section for you to select your keywords. We use this for site optimisation. The key words (or phrases) should be the most relevant aspects of the review i.e. hotel name, location, country and special features e.g. ‘Best pool in the world or ‘balcony hot tub’. The more specific the more traffic these words will drive to the review.
Other reviewing opportunities!
When we were in Australia we arranged a free sunset kayaking trip around Melbourne and included a link to it in an article ‘5 things to do in Melbourne when it is scorching hot’. http://www.loveplaywork.com/2013/02/five-things-to-do-in-melbourne-when-its-scorching-hot/
This article gets a lot of traffic (we wrote it in the very early days of ‘luxury and boutique hotels’ so it is actually on our Loveplaywork.com site). The title was very specific but also relevant. At the time temperatures in Melbourne were hitting 45 degrees and people were searching how to occupy themselves. And it keeps on doing well, because summers in Melbourne are often scorching!
You can arrange excursions or events based on the LBH site, all you have to do is write a blog post for the ‘travel guide’ section which will reference the trip you have taken. We prefer these guides not to be very obvious plugs, please include the reference and link in the article so it looks like you are simply providing valuable information.
We need more reviewers!
Help us build up the site by recommending us to other bloggers, writers and travellers. Ask them to contact me at Hannah@luxuryandboutiquehotels.com if they’d like to write for us.
It will work well to get a plenty of reviewers on board (to build up the links quickly and get good content) so if you have any ideas on how to encourage involvement or who else might be interested we’d love to hear it!
Improving
If you have any ideas which you think would improve the site then we’d value your input.
Leave a Reply