To link, or not to link – revisited
I came across an interesting dilemma last week concerning our site www.links.kg.
The idea behind the site is to provide links to webpages which concern travel to Kyrgyzstan, in particular to travellers’ tales, where they give accounts of their visits to Kyrgyzstan and their impressions of the country and what it has to offer. We made a policy decision in the early stage not to link to sites that “sell” something. As a result we are happy to include book reviews, but not links to sites like Amazon which sell the books. Let’s face it, if someone likes the review and wants to buy the book, it is easy enough for them to find the relevant Amazon page.
Likewise we decided not to include links to tour company sites. To be fair, we do have pages about Celestial Mountains in the “About Us” section and this includes banners and links to our growing family of websites, and there are links in the main section to the various “information service” sites that we operate, (such as www.sounds.kg about traditional Kyrgyz music), but not to the sites that “sell” tours or our tour services or which promote our hotels.
We think that this is logical and that people will understand.
So what was the dilemma?
Well, we came across a report of a tour which we thought was interesting. It wasn’t written in brilliant English, (but who am I to comment on that), and much of it was in note form, but I liked the post gave because in giving a number of highlights from a tour, including a number of unusual features and places that are sometimes overlooked by tourists “in a hurry”, but also because it was fair in that it mentioned both good things along with things that could have been better.
The post was headlined, “Impressions about trip to Kyrgyzstan of the tourist from France”, with the subheading: “My trip in Kyrgyzstan with ****: meeting wonderful places and remarkable people”. Now, it would have been really nice if it had said, “My trip in Kyrgyzstan with Celestial Mountains: meeting wonderful places and remarkable people”, but it wasn’t written by one of our clients. The tour company that organized the trip was mentioned not just in the title, but in several different places … and in glowing terms. As it happens, that in itself, that didn’t worry me. It was an important part of the tourist’s experience and he felt that he wanted to give them credit for having done a particularly good job. Fair enough!
My problem was that it was posted on their own website, which was clearly a tour company site and was clearly a selling site.
So, under our own criteria, no matter how interesting the account we couldn’t include the link on www.links.kg.
.
I called the manager of the company concerned and explained the situation to him.
I asked if, by any chance, the account had been posted anywhere else, somewhere where we might have been able to provide a link. Unfortunately, no.
He said that he understood and suggested that I could take the post and place it elsewhere … but where?
Personally, I think that this is a job for a “Kyrgyz Tourist Promotion Board”. They should be monitoring accounts in the media, searching the internet for suitable material, and trying to bring them to a wider audience, (for example, through Press Releases, or possibly a site like www.links.kg). Unfortunately, however, there isn’t such an organization. That’s one reason why we started the site in the first place.
As it happens, it’s not the first time we’ve come across the problem. The same day that we came across this post, for example, we came across another one but, for the record, the post I have been refering to can be found here: eng.concept.kg/news/403
Bishkek