I was looking for some hotels today for an upcoming trip to Europe when I discovered something pretty cool.
I use a number of sites when booking my trip including Trivago. Trivago
is a site that compares a number of other travel sites I order to find the best price. I have been using Trivago for years and it didn’t seem very popular in the UK, although with recent TV adverts I think it’s becoming more known now.
When searching for a hotel in Madrid I noticed something that I hadn’t seen before. At first I thought it was an internal system test – a mistake – but in actual fact it was much better.
It seems that you can be a hotel ‘tester’ for Trivago and get money back from your stay. I guess this works a bit like mystery shopping where you assess the hotel, staff, amenities etc. and then report on your experience. I have been mystery shopping for years and they pay is usually limited (say £20 for a hotel job) but you get reimbursed for everything including room rate, dinner, mini bar, room service, gym, spa etc.
Looking at the small print it seems that there can be up to 400 questions in a report, which could clearly take a bit of time to complete. Trivago seem to get a pretty good deal here – there are paying you up to €80 when a full mystery shop would cost a lot more. I imagine that given Trivago don’t know anything about your reporting skills that the questionnaire must be pretty straightforward – I would imagine simple yes/no questions which are not too taxing.
There is a link at the bottom of the Trivago
site that shows you where and when test visits are available. Currently there are only a limited number of cities with visits available including Edinburgh, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam Rome and several cities in Germany.
If you are staying in a city anyway, and the dates work out for you, then this might be a good way to pass an hour at the airport on your way home.