Submission status of http://www.hotelnetservice.com please

Bobrat told you the real story. "Fair" for hotel directory sites, means you have 59 seconds to show something unique, or the reviewer is off to the next site, and only 8 million more to review. Two minutes filling out personal information, and ... bzzzp, your time is up! That's fair.

And ... if the editor had gotten past that, the next thing might be spot-check for coverage. That's been mentioned several times, and the site flunked. No, there's no question whatsoever that the editors leaned over backwards to give your site much more time than usual for HD sites, and gave it multiple chances. And there's no question whatsoever that they made the right decision for the surfers. And that's all that matters.

Now, if you want to take this into account -- these considerations that real surfers will have -- and make changes in the site, it'll be more valuable for surfers. That may not make it more valuable for you -- it's your choice. But you know some landmines to avoid. Don't put towns where you don't have hotels. Flag your really exclusive listings: editors will skip past the duplicates looking for unique content, if they can easily figure out which IS unique.

Bobrat told you the truth: registration for surfers is acceptable at a reputable site. But for a site still trying to BUILD a reputation it's suicide. I don't care how many pleasant words you put on your privacy policy -- you can't possibly say ANYTHING I haven't seen on some spammer's site. (And even with a reputable site, I'm not giving real information until I'm ready to start buying!) I'm not sure I trust certification either. On the other hand, I've been to over a hundred thousand random websites, without getting a virus: so I DO trust MY privacy policy. And THAT is: registration on a site without a reputation is absolutely verboten.

Policies, burocracy.

Thank you for your ellaborate replies. We truly appreciate you having this closer look at our case.

My main point is making it very clear not only to DMOZ but to all the visitors reading this thread that Hotel Net Service SRL is a legitimate company, a travel agency that does not engage in spam, mass mail or anything of the sort.

Secondly, I had the opportunity to do business in the USA. In the US you can walk in and 15 minutes later you'll have a registered company and a business is born.

We are based in Italy. To open an SRL business in Italy there is a complete background check, we need to deposit a sum equivalent to the price of a house or decent real estate in the US. The Italian IRS is world famous for being just as tough or more than the American counterpart, specially after dealing with the mafia problem all throughout the 20th century.

Therefore when we open a SRL company in Italy we take for granted when dealing with people that the requirements for such are stringent enough that 99.9% of europeans use our reservation system without a worry of who they're dealing with. We are legit and 100% reputable entity in the Italian state and trusted all throughout Europe.

I think this clears up a major trans-continental misunderstanding here. I have been working with the Web since 1995 and truly I understand your views and I know what kind of sleazy practice you're talking about. I'm proud to state that Hotel Net Service SRL is not what you think it is.

But we are 70% travel agents and 30% webmasters here, you are talking webmaster talk and we are trying to get a very reputable italian travel agency that covers worldwide destinatiosn on your directory.

Instead of getting the kinds of replies you gave now, in which you politely replied my points, we were receiving short notices of spam and accusations that we gather personal information for sale. All of which are false accusations, all of which damage our image. Therefore my previous, very long post.

If you know of someone who is doing that, please PM any meta editor on this forum with that information . You will be doing everyone a great favor (including yourself) by doing so.

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Yes I do know one person doing that. As I explained we've had one employee send you full details, who was buying, who was selling, names of buyers and sellers, ammounts, geo location and you did nothing about it. I will not go through it again, specially seeing my company being denied a deserved DMOZ placement. Sorry.

Not really analogous -- each car dealer has some unique characteristic -- his location and inventory.

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No they don't. One car salesman appears on TV dressed like a bear, the other like a cowboy. If our system, made by us, in-house development, unique content, unique translations, in-house image treatment for hotels for free when they as for it, in-house hosting and proprietary datacenter, a true legit and registered company, if none of this makes us unique you guys need to review your concepts.

A point -- is it clear on the site?

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Yes. It's our marketing slogan, direct contact with property managers, personalized service.

Travel requires a name and ID -- at least, travel across national boundaries. Hotel stays do not (at least in the US). Travel reservations require only a name -- not an ID, and not an authenticator.

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Hotel Net Service requires ID and authentication. Italian law requires full identification, immigration agents visit hotels and agencies often and if the full documentation is not in place we get fined. The law of the land. If the traveller lies about his ID he's in deep trouble in all of Europe and we make sure we do our part to keep it all organized and legal. I fully understand the USA law which is far more practical, but we are in the EU and therefore subject to these regulations. We would not require this otherwise, you can be sure about that. DMOZ in the other hand should not judge our site because USA law doesn't require signups. The Internet is global, so is DMOZ.

It doesn't cost that much for a certificate -- in fact, I think certificates are free to an individual. As for your privacy policy -- if you were unethical and resold customer information, our only remedy would be to file a lawsuit in your country, or possibly the EU. Not something many of us would want to risk.

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They're not free for a LLC company such as Hotel Net Service and you missed the point altogether. It's about accountability.

How could we do anything illegal, how could we run a spam operation or sell personal data if the Certificate Authority certifies our address, names, domain ownership, telephones. If we spammed or did anything shady you could reach me, our partners, our techies, anyone at Hotel Net Service.

The mere fact this "oneeye" member suggested we could sell personal data, or that we require signups for that purpose is absurd.

It's not about the price, you guys are repeating that point, but it's not about the cost of getting a certificate, it's about accountability. We are an accountable and reputable company, period.

Second -- the amount spent on content is not a prerequisite -- we don't care where you find the content, as long as it is unique.

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I did not make this up. Someone brought it up, as if spending millions on content would make it easier to get in.

Third -- That makes it even more complicated. Some sites in which hotels enter their own information would not be listable, but the deeplinks to information about that hotel might be.

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That is the problem with a voluntary-run project. You don't have a clear policy. We are held accountable and we have clear policies for our users and hotels, but you do not.

Why does it make it more complicated? What is the difference if the hotel enters its content or we do? Do you know what our contract says about hotel content displayed on our site?

Further. Do you know of any hotel agency LISTED on DMOZ where hotels do not enter their information?

The criteria cited for denying Hotel Net Service a listing on DMOZ disqualifies 90% of your directory and still you insist on trying to justify your biased and unprofessional judgement of our site. You say Hotel Net Service reminds of you spam, well my friend you've been dealing with too much sleaze and now you see it everywhere, even where it doesn't exist. The "old cop syndrome", you've seen to much of it and now every problem is a nail and for every problem you use a hammer.

Bottom line is : your criteria for disqualifying Hotel Net Service would disqualify most the sites listed there.

Sincerely,
Jose M. Fonseca

>your criteria for disqualifying Hotel Net Service would disqualify most the sites listed there.

Yes, this is true. It's very likely that many of them would not be listed if they were submitted today. It's even likely some of them would be removed -- that's what usually happens when a whole category receives a spring cleaning. Sites reviewed today are reviewed based on today's content and their current guidelines. Sites reviewed three years ago didn't yet have to face the "make your point in 59 seconds" guideline.

Don't blame the editors for that: blame the affiliate mirror spammers. We all have to live in that world, and absent open season on spammers and free assault rifles for editors, it's not likely to change.

My main point is making it very clear not only to DMOZ but to all the visitors reading this thread that Hotel Net Service SRL is a legitimate company, a travel agency that does not engage in spam, mass mail or anything of the sort. .....

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Very probably this is all true. But your main problem is that you have a site that you wnat to be inlcuded in a part od ODP known to us to attract a lot of spam. This is why sites suggested there will be looked at with great distrust. As stated above a site will have probably around one minute to show they are worth further investigation. And the only thing that could make it worthwhile is the site itself. Can the unique content (if any) be located quickly. If not or if we see other things known to be misused by spammers teh review ends.
So our remarks are not so much directed against you or your company but against the complete hotel-directory "business". Past experiences have made us very carefull.

dear PvGool & others

Goodmorning first of all to everybody..
i'd like to add one final comment to get rid of the emotionality of this exchange it and put in a last few tecnical remarks:

Well, this has been a fun thread i have to say.
We have been unjustly accused of

1. being an affiliate site
2. using our site merely to collect emailaddresses and spam the world
3. just putting a useless certificate to pretend we are safe

So...

1. We dont re-direct to anybody, we are our own company. All you have to do is make a reservation, (just put 111111111 as credit card nr) to see by who the reservation gets processed: HotelNetService SRL
If anybody cares to try: please go to http://www.hotelnetservice.com/hotel.phtml/1/en and make a reservation for whichever date you like. then cancel it.

2. I dont even wish to comment on that

3. Certificate is issued by Thawte. Has anybody ever tried to get one of those certificates or understand what we have to prove about our server in order to get one?
I suggest you go to www.thawte.com
These are, together with another company, the leading people in the world to say: "hey Joe Public, we have checked for you, you can trust these people with your credit card details!"


About the uniqueness of the system:

- the hotels can add their own text (go ahead and pretend to be a hotel: http://www.hotelnetservice.com/newhotel/hotelsignup.html?affid=3 , and create a hotelpage, we ll eliminate it from the system later), so some hotels may opt to use something they have "ready in a box", other may want to put in something original.
They may not enter original text, but they sure do have the choice to do so!

- if you go to http://www.hotelnetservice.com/hotel.phtml/3748/en

you ll see on top of the page a searchbox, while on the bottom of the page you see a link saying: "Click here to check rates and availability"

The searchbox speaks for itself, it brings out availability (if entered by the property), while the link on the bottom of the page: "CLick here to check rates and availability", makes it possible for a customer to "talk to" a property inside a safe environment ( !!!!!!)

To be able to access the safe environment (guaranteed by Thawte (see reply nr 3)), people have to sign up.

This is unique as far as we know, and if anybody has an identical system they would have copied it from us.

So what is unique about being able to "talk to" a property?
Most (perhaps all) other reservation system we have seen allow you select your date, if you like it, make the booking.

In our system, its possible to have a "ticket-like" exchange inside the secure environment, which may, or may not, lead to a reservation.

So again, we have two different systems incorporated into one (unique), one of those parts being unique to everybody else outthere as far as we know.


I guess one minute is not enough sometimes to get an in-depth idea of a website.

You may not like the looks of our site, it may not be pretty, etc, sure, we ll work on the design, but we sure are unique in certain features of it.

Is this enough to get us listed in one miserable category?
up to you....
obviously it would make no sense to be listed in a category/cityname, in which we currently feature 1 hotel (we are growing faster then you can see DMOZ by the way...current count say "4724 Active Properties" have had a look at our product and liked it enough to join), but we have some cities in which we have 100 or 200 properties listed, with our unique system.
If you tell me know it's not unique, you have not clicked on any of the links i supplied...

10 am...need some breakfast...

why its UNIQUE

Had breakfast...and back to rephrase this for you:

The HotelNetService System is unique because:

REASON 1 WHY ITS UNIQUE

1. It incorporates 2 different systems in one.
a. the good old "see if its available, then book it" system
b. a ticket-based system whereby customers can "talk to " the properties inside a secure environment.

(to see how it works, click on the orange link in this page: http://www.hotelnetservice.com/hotel.phtml/3534/en : Check here for Rates and Availabiilty" )

REASON 2 WHY ITS UNIQUE

2. The Ticket Based part of the system is unique in itself. I know so, because we designed it.
We looked at sites like www.abaka.com, (listed in dmoz), where a customer can only send an email request to the hotel, and the total exchange remains by email, and a site called Rackspace, which is a company that hosts servers and offer support within a ticketbased system, and mixed them into something new.

Why and how is the ticketbased system unique?

There are quite a lot of people outthere that like to ask the properties questions before they like to book it, they dont want to be confronted with a machine only, they also want human contact, they may want to go back to their husband/wife/partner and show them what they found etc.
In fact, we have cases of people that start the exchange with a hotel, ask them 20 questions, inside our ticketsytem and make the reservatin 10 days later.


People have to signup in both cases to make them enter in our safe environment, because at the end of the day their goal is to make a credit card reservation, they have to be secure.

REASON 3 WHY ITS UNIQUE

3. Hotels have a choice as to which system they wish to use.
We are seeing that half of our properties prefer the Online Direct Booking system, the other half prefers to receive requests.
So on average in any of our cities, the public can choose between half the properties on offer for making a direct reservation, and the other half to contact them directly.


DEAR EDITORS

If i can get everybody to actually test his now and agree that we did indeed create something unique (at least in the hotelbiz) , then perhaps if you care to tell us how to phrase this on www.hotelnetservice.com and all its subpages, we ll be happy to do so:

Please go here: (yes, Oneeye...you need to signup...otherwise you can't make a secure ecrypted Thawte guaranteed credit card reservation later..)

: to see how it works, click on the orange link in this page: http://www.hotelnetservice.com/hotel.phtml/4048/en: Check here for Rates and Availability"


THANKS, ALFRED

I can see where one of the problems is.
We totaly don't care about the techniques to make a booking.
Unique for us is only about content. Which hotels are listed. Which information is listed about these hotels. Is this information available somewhere else.
Because there are a lot of hotel directories (and even more wannabees) the amount of unique information must be very high to be included in ODP.

If we don't list a site it won't mean that this isn't a good site. It just means that the site doesn't offer enough extra to our users.

I think the level of recrimination in this thread amply justifies several conclusions:

(1) There is fundamental mutual distrust.
(2) That distrust is growing as the discussion continues.
(3) That distrust is based on a solid feeling -- on both sides -- that fundamentally we are working at cross purposes, with completely different definitions of "unique", of "content", of "value", of "legitimate", and of "spam".

That amply justifies the multiple editors' decision that this site is not listable. This isn't an ethical judgment. This site simply doesn't fall into the part of the web that the ODP was designed to index. And, as your purpose is so different from the ODP's (and you appear to have so little understanding and so much contempt for the ODP ideal) that your frustration level would be lower if you considered those decisions final.

On the basis of legal threats received, future decisions on this site will be reserved for ODP staff.