Welcome to TRAVEL.COM's free social community for members. We look forward to your participation in our community including groups, forums, travel listings & reviews, blogs, and more. If you have any questions about the community rules, please ask about them in the applicable Questions & Answers forum.
Please note that the online Community is TOTALLY separate of reservations. They are two separate entities (not even part of the same company) and no one in the Community areas has any access to online reservation information. Essentially, this online community is a user-to-user, independent part of the site which is monitored a volunteer moderator who keeps things on track. To contact reservations, select the "Contact" menu option at the bottom of your screen. The community only offers its free services to members but membership is free.
User Profiles
In our community, there are multiple types of member profiles including those for individuals who love to travel, those with visual disabilities can opt in to try out our screen reader (in addition to their own reader), and for businesses directly related to the travel industry. Business members should definitely read the business section below to be sure that they comply with the special rules that apply to them. Also note that you can opt in to use different world languages.
Your user profile page is the way that people get to know you. We encourage you to upload a photo of yourself or other image to your profile page to be shown besides your activities. These images are called avatars. We also encourage you to place a large "splash" image on your profile page such as a picture from your home town or a favorite destination. Please make sure that any images that you upload are your own or are in the public domain. We reserve the right to approve or disapprove of any photograph. So please keep them nice! You can also add one video on your profile page as your personal "introduction" video.
To see an example profile, visit the profile of The Travel Penguin who is one of our top users and has written over 450 reviews.
In your profile, there is a form that allows you to place links to your personal social media pages including Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter, and you own website. Note that if your link to pages on these site link to business websites, your profile will be considered to be a business. Per the rules, do not place links anywhere else on the site.
User Groups
User Groups are the core areas of the Community and places of shared interests. We invite you to join and participate in any of the 300+ User Groups that we have spanning every country in the world -- whether your interest is in travel within your own country or travel to other countries. Within each user group, members can share relevant photos, videos, event announcements, and discussions. If you would like us to establish a specialty user group (say for a water sport you enjoy or a club) let us know.
We invite you to share your favorite travel destination YouTube (and other video sharing site) links in our country user groups. Please remove any extraneous advertising from the location descriptions such as links and email addresses which can be viewed directly on YouTube. Also, be sure to share your comments on the videos already posted there and click on the "Like" button if you like any particular video.
User Groups are the places to leave announcements & comments - akin to a Facebook page. These tend to be short-term dialogues. Like Facebook, you can control who can participate such as the public or restrict it to your friends.
Whether or not a message should go into a forum or into a User Group, be sure that you choose the most applicable country. Questions in the activity stream will be deleted. You may now use the Discussion area of a country's User Group for questions and answers regarding that topic.
Forums vs. User Groups
Forums are the places to leave questions & answers. These are open to everyone on the site.
User Blogs
User Blogs are strictly for non-commercial, personal usage. If you would like to blog about your local area or your travels anywhere, feel free to go to the blog section and create your own blog.
1) No links are allowed EXCEPT to internal system links on TRAVEL.COM such as a reviewable travel listing (restaurants, parks, etc.).
2) Likewise, If you use photos in your blogs, those must be uploaded to the blog and not linked to any external website
3) Do not use any formatting such as changing from our system fonts and sizes
All user content on the system, including blogs, is subject to moderation and editing by an administrator.
Travel Listings & Reviews
In order to prevent spamming, if you wish to recommend a company, there is but one way on our system to do so and that is by reviewing the company via our travel reviews and listings area. Reviews and recommendations outside of that system will be deleted as spam. Please note that if we do not have a travel category applicable, then that type of company may not be listed or reviewed. Please feel free to add new travel listings that you would like to review.
Reviews With Pros & Cons Are Welcome - Rants Are Not
If you have had a less than satisfactory experience with a company, you are welcome to review both the pros and cons of your experience. But one-sided rants intended to harm to an operator are generally not acceptable. If you feel you have a monetary issue with the operator, please contact the operator directly plus governmental offices, etc. We do not have the resources to act as a referee.
Likewise, we do not allow first-time posts to be negative rants. Those who jump from website to website to post one-time negative or attack messages will not find their messages approved here. Until one has built up a history of normal messaging, negative posts will be deleted.
Only ONE listing is allowed per country. The address must be verifiable by Google. This should be the headquarters or main office of the company. Although you may advertise what your company does, it may not include an advertisement for a specific product as those may change.
Promoting Your Profile + Karma Points
Various actions in our Community area leave links back to your user profile such as:
1) Participation in the Community activity stream
2) Submitting a new travel listing such as ones for restaurants, bars, parks, etc.
3) Reviewing a travel listing
4) Posting in the forums
5) Creating new blog entries
Activities that promote your profile also earn you "Karma points" which are reflected as "droplets" just below the "splash" picture of your profile page. This allows other users to know how active you are or whether you are new user.
GENERAL RULES
- Everything here must be travel related.
- Original Content Only: Please do not post content appearing on other web sites including the Wikipedia. All of your postings must be your own original content and not duplicated from other websites -- including your own. Violators will be banned as duplicate content hurts a website's rating among the major search engines.
- Your registration location that you indicated in your profile must match your registration IP address location (spammers tend to give false location information).
- Do not post links to external websites: The posting of URLs is prohibited anywhere on our system except within your profile page stream. That includes links to photos on 3rd party sites. The only exception is for links to videos sites such as YouTube and these must places in the "Add Video" area of the appropriate User Group.
- All new forum messages are moderated. New/novice members who attempt to post URLs/e-mail addresses will be automatically blocked by our software and banned from the system. We have a "one attempt and you are banned" policy for new users who attempt to post URLs in their messages as 99.9% of those those people tend to be spammers.
- You may not use parts of an e-mail address or a url in your user name.
- You may not promote any illegal activity such as selling false documents, visa, passports, etc. In fact, any user promoting travel documents, visas, or passport services will be deleted -- whether or not those services are legal or not. Over the years, we have found too many of these entities offering illegal services. Since we cannot verify these services we simply will not allow them on our system. Please let us know if you find any of these on our system.
Inactivity
While we hope that all users will participate in community activities frequently, business users need to participate in activities at least once every 180 days or their profile and other online content is subject to deletion. Individual users only need to participate in activities once per 12 months to keep their profile active. All users who have neither added an avatar and splash page to their profile page nor have otherwise participated in activities within one month of joining the community may also be deemed inactive.
BUSINESS MEMBERS
To keep the community focused on travel and clear of spam, some commonsense rules will apply.
Only Travel Businesses Allowed
If you appear to be representing a business, only travel businesses are allowed. Otherwise, you must register soley as an individual member and not promote any business. Due to the amount of spam by "visa promotion" companies, such companies are banned from participating.
Advertising or Other Solicitations Are Prohibited
Any messages with advertising, announcements, promotions, surveys, sweepstakes, questionnaires, or solicitations of any kind will be deleted without explanation. This includes promoting your website or any other service, attempt to post URLs, e-mail addresses, phone numbers or any other kind of advertising spam EXCEPT in the properly designated lines within your profile page.
Do not post urls in the Community stream. If you are a company, please note that every activity the you participate in on our site contains a link back to your profile page where business users have a box to input their company contact information including their website.
Messages by new users praising this or that company will normally be deleted as this is widely used spam technique. We encourage our regular users to give their opinions on companies but those who come to spam will be disappointed.
You may help other users with your expertise, but you may not ask if you can provide assistance. Just give helpful non-business guidance if you are here to help and not solicit business. TRAVEL.COM retains the right to remove or edit inappropriate user content without explanation.
Your website domain and your email address must match
Any user profile that appears to be of a commercial nature must NOT register with public email accounts such as Gmail. If it looks like you are with a business, then your e-mail address must also be within the same domain name as your company's website. You may not use public accounts (like our-hotel@*mail.com). These kind of throwaway accounts are used by spammers and not by businesses that have their own website domain. Therefore, you may not list in your profile a website domain at which you do not also have an e-mail address. After all, who would trust services from a person who claims to be from a company but doesn't use that company's email domain?
Your indicated location and IP address location must match
If the location that you specified in your profile at signup time does not match the location of your IP address you are subject to being banned due to providing false information as this is a common trait of spammers.
Travel Listings
We invite business members whose businesses fall within our 50+ travel categories (restaurants, hotels, local tour operators, etc.) to submit a listing of their business online which our users can review. If you attempt to submit your business listing into a category to which it does not apply, you will be banned.
Main Reasons People Get Banned
1) People posting links anywhere except a specified link area (such as space for their profile website, which is not only OK but encouraged)
2) Spammers promoting a website at which they do not have an e-mail address (their e-mail domain name doesn't match their website domain name)
Summary
We cannot list all possible rules here. However, we reserve the right to edit or delete any message, user created content, or user record without explanation in order to maintain and improve the quality and standards here. If you read these rules, you should know why something was deleted.
Just read this message and you'll have most of your answers.
We look forward to your participation. So let's have fun!