THE CHARLEVILLE LODGE Hotel are at it again. Their controversial Facebook page is now running a competition offering tickets in exchange for positive five star reviews on the social network.

The Phibsborough hotel faced some backlash yesterday when they suggested Ed Sheeran fans go to homeless shelters if they didn’t want to pay inflated prices on the nights of his Croke Park gigs. The hotel’s director Paul Stenson explained to DailyEdge.ie that the page saw an influx of negative reviews as a result of the controversy that completely “disparaged the reputation of the hotel”.

I saw the review rating going down, it went down from 4.2 to 3.8. So I thought I’d play them at their own game.

The page began offering Ed Sheeran tickets in exchange for five star reviews, in an effort to bring the rating back up.

We were getting barraged with one star reviews, totally unsubstantiated, from people who’ve never set foot in the hotel. People will take them seriously even though those leaving them have never even set foot in the hotel. Two can play that game.

The winners of the eight Ed Sheeran tickets will be chosen randomly from the five star reviews, and they should thank “the sad, 1-star-review-leaving haters most sincerely”.

Obviously if you have left a 1 star review you are not eligible to win the tickets. Not because you left a bad review for a hotel you’ve never been in, but because you are a total asshole for doing something as low as that.

Some people weren’t happy with the hotel’s methods of achieving positive reviews:

“I think asking for the rating is really low and an abuse of the page making you no better than the people who left the bad reviews. Disappointing”.

“I just can’t bring myself sell out my self worth for the sake of a pair of tickets”.

“You complain about bad star ratings via facebook from people who’ve never stayed in your hotel. That’s beside the point. How people view you through your Facebook posts is in their eyes a representation of your establishment”.

But others were impressed, and the review rating has already shot up to 4.3. Stenson said the methods used were “only fair” considering the ‘unsubstantiated’ one star reviews.

As for the backlash, Stenson says it’s all down to the face that “an awful lot of people just like to winge and moan” and that it’s doing no harm to the business at all, “just look at the page’s increase in likes”.

Speaking on TV 3′s Midday earlier, he claimed that those complaining are “overreacting completely”.

Facebook is no place for professionalism, it’s a place for entertaining and engaging with people. If they talk about it, that’s great. It’s the reason you came across it.

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