Top |
Arts |
Business |
Computers |
Games |
Health |
Kids |
News |
Recreation |
Reference |
Regional |
Science |
Shopping |
Society |
Sports |
World |
Regional |
Languages |
News |
Blogs
Plunge forward!
Wikitravel:Welcome, business owners
From Wikitravel
Jump to: navigation, search
Contents
Welcome, business owners. We mean that. The owners (and loyal employees) of hotels, restaurants, bars, attractions, and other businesses catering to travellers are very welcome here. Everyone is invited to share information that helps others in their travels. Everyone is invited to participate in the guide's development and decision-making. Everyone is also invited to share the information in Wikitravel with whomever they want. Of course, we do have some guidelines, policies, and a few legal requirements that go along with this.
[edit] Contribute
If you own a restaurant, hotel, bar, or popular tourist attraction, plunge forward and add a listing for it. Find the article for the city or district it's located in, and add it to the appropriate section (See, Do, Buy, Eat, Drink, Sleep). Please note that even if your business fits into more than one of these sections it should be listed only once - for example, if your hotel has a restaurant and bar, list the hotel under "Sleep" and mention that there is a restaurant and bar. Take a look at our style guidelines to see how to format your listing. Those guidelines also explain the kinds of businesses we'd rather not include, such as third-party booking services; we want to put travellers in direct contact with the people they'll be patronizing.
Since we don't use images of hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, etc. please try to describe your business as straightforward as possible. The key guideline is: "Don't tout." Save the sales pitch and just tell it like it is. You don't have to stick to a dry recitation of facts, but keep in mind that Wikitravellers aren't fools. They'll see through flowery descriptions and effusive praise, and they won't trust it. Any of it. They'll distrust your listing, and they'll also start to distrust Wikitravel in general, which isn't good for you or for the rest of us.
[edit] Never remove info on competitors
One thing we ask you never to do is to remove information about your competitors. Even if they break every rule in the book, don't remove it or edit it yourself. Instead point it out at Talk page of the Wikitravel article providing a reason for deletion, and only after reaching a consensus there that it was done fairly, it can be removed from the article.
You could just add a listing for your business and leave it at that. But we'd love to see you sign up and stick around.
But don't do it just for us. If you own a travel-related business, you probably want to see local tourism and other travel to your area thrive, and helping to make the Wikitravel guide to your destination better is one way to promote that. We've found that the better an article is, the more traffic it gets. Twice a month we feature another well-developed article on the Main Page as either "Destination of the Month" or "Off the Beaten Path". And for the crème-de-la-crème pages, we flag them and feature them as "Star" articles.
So make sure all the key attractions and activities in your locale are listed... as well as your business. No one's asking you to add listings for your competitors (though to be honest, we'd love it if you did). But if you own a nightclub, surely you must know some good restaurants in the area. If you own a hotel, you probably know something about what your guests see and do while they're in town. We'd love it if you uploaded images of attractions in your city, just be sure you understand they'll be published under the free content license that we use. You may even consider becoming a docent for your city, someone who offers to answer questions that travellers might have about things that aren't covered in the article. If a traveller sees that you're genuinely interested in helping, that certainly can't hurt the chances that they'll patronize your business when they get to town. And it's quite alright to put information about yourself and your business on your User page (if you don't turn it into a marketing brochure).
And on the off chance that once in a while you manage to get away from the job and get out of town, please contribute the information you learn as a traveller yourself, to other guide pages.
Wikitravel has more to offer you than free promotion on the web. This guide is published under a "copyleft" license that allows its content to be used by anyone, free of charge, for any legal purpose. It's called the "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike" license. [1] The "Attribution" part says we have to give credit to the people who contributed the information. The "ShareAlike" part says that everything contributed to Wikitravel has to be made available to anyone else, under the same terms. This means that if you are a hotel owner, and you want to provide a city guide to the people staying with you, you can print copies and put them in each room, and boast "free guide to the city provided" on your own web site. (We specifically didn't include the "NonCommercial" limitation in Wikitravel's licence, so that business owners like you could do this.)
The only restrictions on you are the same ones that apply to Wikitravel itself: you have to give credit to the contributors, and anyone you give this information to has the same right to redistribute it. Yes, this means you'd be giving your customers information about your competitors in the process, but if they're already at your place, and it isn't a total dump, you're probably safe. See Wikitravel:How to re-use Wikitravel guides for more details.
[edit] See also
|
