Guest AdamDB Posted July 25, 2003 Posted July 25, 2003 Can you kindly tell me the status of www.gocanadahotels.com posted to http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/Canada/Travel_and_Tourism/Lodging/ . Thank you.
Alucard Posted July 25, 2003 Posted July 25, 2003 Rejected and will not be listed since it is affiliated with bookdirect.com and bookdirectpro.com. Thanks.
Guest AdamDB Posted July 25, 2003 Posted July 25, 2003 I'm sorry, I don't understand. Go Canada Hotels is using BOOKDirect's technology and hosting services, but is owned by a major hotel management group in Canada (not by BOOKDirect).
Alucard Posted July 25, 2003 Posted July 25, 2003 The domains gocanadahotels.com and bookdirect.com are registered to the same company, Spyre Infostructure Inc. 550 Eglinton Ave. West Toronto, ON M5N 3A8 CA So on this evidence, it doesn't look like what you claim is the case. Sorry.
bobrat Posted July 25, 2003 Posted July 25, 2003 I don't think it's the actual address, just a Post Office Box near Avenue Road. I believe the Toronto address is Suite 210 - 25 Imperial Street. Spyre is the developer of the Hotel in a Box system, an Oracle based application that creates template driven web sites for hotels. It is possible that they created the site under contract to Go Canada and are not the same company. However, considering that Go Canada has many [possibly hundreds] of web sites with variations of it's name, and that Spyre has a number of variants web sites - hotels.org, amadeus.net, etc. one must proceed with caution to avoid mirror/duplicates.
Guest AdamDB Posted July 29, 2003 Posted July 29, 2003 Well, thank you for your help. I do know that we contract out services (just like Travelocity, Expedia, etc), however, just to point out, BOOKDirect does not own Amadeus.net (a GDS service that has been around before BOOKDirect). If the domain were transfered to the owners of Go Canada, would that be deemed acceptable?
marisa1116 Posted July 29, 2003 Posted July 29, 2003 Haven't looked at the sites, but as a general rule: No, it's not a question of ownership, it's a question of content. We don't list travel affiliates (and that's what I'm guessing we're talking about here) not because of who owns them, but because they offer our users no real unique content. A million people could sign up with "affiliate content provider x" and create a million sites with nearly identical content. Listing them would do a disservice to our users.
Guest AdamDB Posted July 29, 2003 Posted July 29, 2003 ok, I understand what you are saying. However, the content for the site is not similar to our own sites. The Go Canada site is showing the Westmont Hospitality Group / Innvest Canada portfolio and offerings specific to their company. Yes, they do use our reservation/hosting service, but the content of the site is completely unique and different, whereby they are offering users special content for their own hotels in Canada. Our BOOKDirect system only provides the capability of online reservations for their site.
Guest AdamDB Posted July 29, 2003 Posted July 29, 2003 I found through your editorial guidelines what you mean about being an affiliate. I will get the owners to re-design the site to add complete and unique content for the properties that they own. Thanks for all your help...keep up the great work!
spectregunner Posted July 30, 2003 Posted July 30, 2003 Thank you for taking the time and effort to read through the guidelines.
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