|
Turkey Travel Planner (TTP)
provides thousands of pages
of travel information to you
and everyone else in the world at
no charge,
even though it costs tens of thousands
of dollars to research and organize
this information.
How is this possible? How does TTP
pay its bills?
By far the largest
part of the revenue that supports TTP
comes from
publishing advertisements on
its pages. Advertisements can be useful
or annoying, but they're what pays
the bills for newspapers, magazines,
TV and radio broadcasts, and most websites,
including TTP.
More...
A small but welcome additional
amount comes to TTP from its Sponsored
Page program. There
are fewer than 100 Sponsored Pages
among the 5000 pages on TTP, with
no plans to increase that number.
I write a Sponsored Page with the
approval of a travel facility that
gives financial support to TTP, then
mark the page with the "Sponsored
Page" label so that you know it
was a collaboration and has been paid
for.
It's very similar to how travel
agencies operate: if a travel
agency recommends a tour, hotel,
etc. and a client decides to buy
it, the client pays the published
retail price (say, $100) and the
agency receives a small commission
(usually 5% to 10% of the retail
price, in this case $5 to $10) from
the tour company or hotel. If the
client were to go directly to the
tour company or hotel, s/he would
pay the same retail price of $100,
so buying the tour or hotel through
a travel agency does not cost the
client more. The price is the same,
$100, either way.
The small commission pays the travel
agency's bills and allows it to help
clients to choose good travel products
and services.
Travel agencies—and TTP—recommend
only services they believe to be good
quality because they want satisfied
clients. In these days of Internet
forums, bad service quickly
becomes known to the world, and the
recommender of bad service loses credibility
with travelers. No smart business knowingly
recommends bad services.
If a page does not have the "Sponsored
Page" label, then it's my own
personal unvarnished opinion, written
by me with nobody else's input. The
vast majority of the more than 4000
pages on TTP—98%— are not Sponsored
Pages.
My aim is to make Sponsored Pages useful
and informative, a real aid in helping
you to select good travel services such
as hotels, transport
and tour companies; and, in this
way, to make TTP self-supporting.
Sponsored Pages are a far better source
of support than such things as video
ads which,
I think, are a real annoyance on web
pages. I think Sponsored pages are
even better, more honest, informative
and useful than those expensive
ads in travel magazines (which
is what pays the bills for those
magazines).
In writing Sponsored Pages, I stress
what I think you want and need
to know, and I usually do
a much better job of it than do most
travel-business promotions.
For example, hotel ads and websites
tend to say the same things: "Right
in the city center!" "Near
sights, shopping and entertainment!"
"Comfortable, stylish and reasonably-priced!" Reading
that same stuff over and over doesn't
help you to choose the place that's
right for you.
And if it's not "Right in
the city center," I won't
write that it is. Why would I? If you go there,
you'll see that it's not.
Instead, I work to write a useful,
informative, truthful page
that fits well with all the non-Sponsored
Pages on TurkeyTravelPlanner.com.
The very selection of a business for
inclusion in TTP is a vote
of confidence. If a travel
business doesn't treat visitors right,
I don't want it on my site because
it will give TTP a bad name. I know
travelers will definitely use services
mentioned on TTP, and will definitely
tell other travelers about them, so
the services had better be
good.
Occasional disappointments are bound
to occur. Not all travelers have good
experiences at all facilities—we
do not live in a perfect world!—so
if something is not up to your expectations,
I want to know about it. You're welcome—indeed encouraged!—to post
your opinions and experiences of
any and all travel facilities and businesses
described on TTP on the TTP
Forums, or to send
me a message directly.
In case
of a disagreement with a travel supplier
mentioned on TTP, I can often help
to find a satisfactory resolution.
If a travel company is clearly not
working in the interests of travelers,
I remove it from the Sponsored
Page program.
Thanks for your support of Turkey
Travel Planner!
|
