Ryan Walker Aman Incident

[Quickstatus]

the actions taken are not inline with what the hotel brand is supposed to represent - certainly not for 6k USD a night.

Not necessarily.
I dont think we even know what the resort brand is supposed to represent.
It really depends on who the hotel believes the target market is... Is the target market significantly different from the market the YouTuber represents?

In my view, a really upmarket hotel may actually want to make their vibe über-exclusive and extremely discreet and ban all these Influencers and YTuber vloggers carrying video equipment through the place.

Will this affect the resort? I doubt it.
Think of an exclusive club. The bouncer determine who is eligible to enter and who is not. They bounce the undesirables. The undesirables then complain on their social media. Does the exclusive club care?. I dont think so as it would only make the club more exclusive and attractive to the right people.

Did this YouTuber inadvertently increase the attractiveness of this resort to a certain type of clientele? . Possibly

But in the end who knows.. maybe more info will come out in the following days.

Aman's silence is damning though

Why?,
I actually think silence is the best policy.
I don't see any reason why a USD$6-9K/night resort would publicly respond to a YouTuber.
The reservation was not confirmed by email. A refund on the way. There remains zero residual obligation.
But lets see what happens.

 

[RooFlyer]

What I hate with these creators now is the click bait thumbnails they use to try and get clicks. What happened to the good old fashioned review without all the nonsense.

I agree - although it seems to be common no matter how 'sensible' the creator is. I wonder if its inherent in the software (I have no idea how its all done!) Genuine pilot Petr at Mentour Pilot I believe is well respected and gives good analytical content of airline issues/incidents. Yet his stories come up as :

 

[Quickstatus]

Yet his stories come up as :

My understanding is these thumbnails are created by a thumbnail service or an graphic artist (not YouTube)

For example Mentour gets his video art from Electrify

 

[RooFlyer]

My understanding is these thumbnails are created by a thumbnail service or an graphic artist (not YouTube)

Thanks. You'd have to think the content-maker (Petr in this case) would have to OK the art. I guess he needs clicks as much as anyone.

 

[ols]

If anything, and pending a lotto win, I'm more inclined to want to stay at this brand's hotels. Or any brand that bans filming by "content creators".

I would pay extra to stay at places that banned 'effluencers"

 

[Quickstatus]

would have to OK the art.

The alternative is YT takes random snippets of the video and uses it as the thumbnail.

The bigger YouTubers have the revenue to afford digital art.

 

[elanshin]

What I hate with these creators now is the click bait thumbnails they use to try and get clicks. What happened to the good old fashioned review without all the nonsense.

Can't survive on YouTube. Basically EVERY creator has to make clickbait thumbnails and titles or they get punished out of a job. It will also likely never make it to your feed unless you specifically are subscribed and have notification bell on for them.

 

[Happy Dude]

Can't survive on YouTube. Basically EVERY creator has to make clickbait thumbnails and titles or they get punished out of a job. It will also likely never make it to your feed unless you specifically are subscribed and have notification bell on for them.

Really? I'm not sure if I'm talking about "my feed" in that case.

I have no idea how the algo works but I have never subscribed or hit the notification button on anything on youtube and the "next up" videos ("my feed"?) are remarkably similar to the one I'm watching right then, after having clicked though the AFF link. Same for other things I watch like music videos and fishing knots.

 

[RooFlyer]

It will also likely never make it to your feed unless you specifically are subscribed and have notification bell on for them.

The only feeds I have are breakfast, lunch and dinner (OK, and a few snacks in between). I bookmark the creators I like and watch the videos there which are of interest.

Basically EVERY creator has to make clickbait thumbnails and titles or they get punished out of a job.

Depends what you mean by clickbait, but a couple of mine seem to be pretty conservative.



I had a look at Ryan Walker's page and watched his review of Giraffe Manor. Worth a look, just for the giraffes!! I won't be bookmarking his site, as the hotels he goes to are out of my league. But his page isn't that click-baity, either.

 

[HMcM]

What I hate with these creators now is the click bait thumbnails they use to try and get clicks. What happened to the good old fashioned review without all the nonsense.

I agree - although it seems to be common no matter how 'sensible' the creator is. I wonder if its inherent in the software (I have no idea how its all done!) Genuine pilot Petr at Mentour Pilot I believe is well respected and gives good analytical content of airline issues/incidents. Yet his stories come up as :

Definitely both examples of slop in the travel space, but I notice that neither of you posted screenshots of Ryan Wakler's channel, because he doesn't do this at all. His thumbnails are really quite tasteful and picturesque representations of the place he is staying at / reviewing.

I would say that many of the responses here are throwing the baby out with the bath water. Are their cough reviewers? Absolutely. Is there slop travel content? Absolutely. Is that all the travel content on youtube? Absolutely not.

Ryan seems pretty level headed with his criticisms of hotels and I appreciate that he has seemed to phase out the somewhat cringey special request criteria.

As for the Aman situation they have obviously cough the bed with this one and it does not look good for them, but as another has said the plebs (myself included) are not dropping $6K USD / night on a hotel so out opinion is of limited value. It's whether this hiding from public view is seen as positive or negative for the up market clientele. Overall it is almost certain that while they are charging full price right now they are providing a sub-par product and they did not want that visible to the public.

 

[Quickstatus]

Overall it is almost certain that while they are charging full price right now they are providing a sub-par product and they did not want that visible to the public.

I'm not sure we can arrive at that conclusion without first hand experience.

 

[HMcM]

I'm not sure we can arrive at that conclusion without first hand experience.

We can deduce based on experience and the evidence in front of us. We can also make inferences based on their lack of response.

To me the vision out of the window is severely lacking compared to what I would expect from a $6k USD / night property. It looks pretty barren and uninviting, so I would do them the favour of assuming that simply means it is simply unfinished.

You've hypothesised that Aman simply does not want reviewers there due to being an exclusive brand. Which falls apart when you realise this is not the first Aman property he has reviewed, he reviewed the Aman Tokyo without incident.

The lack of response from Aman also points towards them knowing they have an issue. If as you hypothesised they do not wish to allow reviewers to keep the place exclusive and that would be seen as a positive by their target clientele then they could have simply released a statement along those lines instead of going radio silent, blocking reviews and deleting comments.

There are a hell of a lot more logical leaps needed for your assumptions to make sense than for mine.

 

[Quickstatus]

There are a hell of a lot more logical leaps needed for your assumptions to make sense than for mine.

Too many logical leaps/long bows....

That he reviewed Aman Tokyo, I think does not mean anything cis a vis this Aman.

Lack of response does not necessarily mean there is an issue. As I said often the best policy is silence.. Why does anyone think they have an obligation to respond?. Don't feed the seagulls and they will eventually go away