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UPDATE YOUR PROFILE TO SHOW LOCATION
The response we give to quite a few posts varies according to someone’s location, especially about travel plans and climate advice. So please take a moment to update this.
PLEASE GIVE PRICES IN DIRHAMS
Please get used to thinking and writing in dirhams. This forum is used by visitors from many countries who won’t have any idea of the value if you quote pounds, euros, dollars or whatever. No matter which currency you’ve been quoted in, you will be paying in dirhams, so use xe.com if you don’t know the current exchange rate.
BE A CONTRIBUTOR, NOT JUST A USER
You may not be able to contribute before your trip but it would help terrifically if you come back afterwards and let people know how you got on, what worked well, what didn’t work so well. There is no restriction on mentioning which travel company, which hotels, which restaurants you have used. Such information is extremely helpful to other forum users who are researching their upcoming trip.
Many service providers put pressure on customers to write reviews. Whether or not you do so is up to you. The only restriction is that these reviews must not be written in exchange for personal gain, such as gifts, services, or money. Try to separate out what was good about the company’s services, as opposed to what was good about the locations you visited.
PLEASE BE POLITE
If someone is helpful to you they will undoubtedly appreciate a quick ‘thanks’. If you disagree with something someone else has posted it is fine to say so, but please do this in a polite and constructive manner.
BALANCED VIEWS
The best advice on a particular destination is often that which is gained from someone with fairly recent personal experience. It doesn’t really matter whether the person giving the advice is a one-time traveller, or someone who visits often, the advice they give will hopefully take into account their negative experiences as well as their positive experiences, and will provide what they see as a balanced view.
OK TO POLITELY DISAGREE
It may be that other recent visitors, having had a completely different set of experiences, might disagree with what the first person has written, and this is where it is useful for others to chip in and give their (also personal) view of a destination. It’s fine to disagree politely, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
RECENT EXPERIENCE?
So should you comment only if you have fairly recent personal experiences? Well no, all views are welcome, but in order for readers to give due weight to comments it’s important to qualify comments that are relate to personal experiences from years ago. For example, if I was writing about Casablanca, I might start, “It’s several years since I visited but….” The person then realises that things might well have changed since.
SECONDHAND INFORMATION
And it’s even more important if what you are relating are things you’ve read or heard elsewhere, rather than your personal experiences. Again, try to provide a balanced view rather than cherry picking all the positive comments about a place and ignoring the negative, or visa versa. When the experiences you relate are not your own it would be helpful if you make this clear.
PLEASE DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD
This thread has had to be recreated due to the number of numpties ignoring the request above. If someone does post on this thread, by all means report it as inappropriate but please DO NOT post a comment about their post as you will be making the issue even worse.