Close User Name Password
Login Register
Travel alerts straight to your inbox:
 

Tags: / / / /

Royal Caribbean Cruises Has Web 2.0 Viral Infection

March 16, 2009 at 1:41 PM | by JetSetCD | 1 Comment

No surprise here: Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has a viral infection. For once, however, it's not the Norovirus but that new-fangled byproduct of Web 2.0, the viral marketing infiltration. According to Consumerist, a group of fifty "Royal Champions" was outed by their own creator, the Customer Insight Group, as being a successful project whereby frequent positive cruise commenting on sites such as CruiseCritic was rewarded with free cruises and other perks.

So what's the big deal? Well, it seems that the "Royal Champions" weren't always up front about their status as compensated reviewers, effectively misleading readers of CruiseCritic forums with their positive comments. Add to this the fact that CruiseCritic admins assisted Royal Caribbean in choosing the fifty, with one of the stipulations being quantity of posts, "with many having over 10,000 message board posts on various Royal Caribbean topics." From here, the hole just gets deeper.

Now that many RC fans feel slighted at not having made the ranks and most everyone else is disgusted at the covert trade of cruising for happy juicing, the trustworthiness of such forums is under fire.

Due to CruiseCritic's ownership by TripAdvisor, which is in turn under the Expedia blanket of travel sites, a viral marketing stunt gone awry could possibly continue to negatively ripple. Does news like this affect your ability to trust good reviews on travel sites, or do you already consider yourself an excellent shill-spotter enough to weed out the solicited from the unsolicited? While this whole ordeal is mired in serious muckety-muck, let's hope it serves as a lesson for future viral marketers and as an argument for transparency.

Related Stories:
· Royal Caribbean Caught Infiltrating Review Sites With Viral Marketing Team [Consumerist]
· Paid cheerleaders: Does Royal Caribbean's viral campaign cross the line? [Tripso]
· Cruises Coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Consumerist]

1 Comment

Post a Comment

Return to » Royal Caribbean Cruises Has Web 2.0 Viral Infection

  1. Stuart Falk

    Jaunted Reader

    US Law

    Regarding US law: Here's some of the pertinent language from the FTC for those not familiar with it: "When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product which might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience) such connection must be fully disclosed.... The FTC is planning to strengthen the endorsement guidelines to specifically address blogs and viral marketing, so hopefully these types of bogus endorsement programs will be a thing of the past. http://www2.ftc.gov/opa/2008/11/endorsements.shtm
    March 24, 2009 at 6:10 PM
    #Permalink

Return to » Royal Caribbean Cruises Has Web 2.0 Viral Infection

Leave a Comment

Not yet a member? Click here to become a member.

Already a member? Log in below:

Comment with your Facebook account.