if you are one of the new directors what happened to the old ones?
has the whole website changed management/ownership?
i think your comment in the second paragraph putting reviews before the forum is misplaced and this may be why we keep being asked for feedback-the regulars/contributors always came here for the forum for the help they could get/give and the reviews followed on from there.
social media has changed the way people use the internet and maybe more use needs to be made of this to drive people here.
if you are trying to relaunch this site to get more traffic you would be well advised to read all the previous posts on this and similar subjects as there was plenty feedback given over the years.
as i have said before the management need to spend the time and effort to drive interaction towards the forum. get the forum back to being the vibrant community it once was and let the reviews follow on from there

Jimd

Both Chris and Phil brown are no longer involved in the running of this site. Chris has a lot of personal commitments and has stepped aside to concentrate on those.

This is not a relaunch of the site and the traffic is healthy after the site was made responsive. Something that was killing the traffic was a non responsive site.

I will check the older posts but I have asked the question out of courtesy as opposed to just implementation of things we feel will work.

Cheers

Lance

Lance, I think a lot will depend on how you now respond to any feedback posted here - yes, it's a courtesy to ask for it but if users don't see it being acted on then people will continue to feel alienated. I'm surprised to hear that traffic is healthy - perhaps it is for the reviews but that was never why I used this site and I rarely read them. The sort of places that in the main get reviewed here are not the the sort of places I choose to holiday in and so while I do occasionally look I rarely find any info on the places I am considering. I was, however, a very frequent contributor to a number of the forum topics and they are very quiet now. For example there have been just 5 comments posted in the Cuba forum since the beginning of this year - a forum which was once very busy. In fact compared to a few years ago all the forums are very quiet now. I guess it depends in whether you see HT as primarily a review site or one that provides a forum for users to ask for and share information and I guess that will depend a lot on which format generates the most advertising income for the owners.

I've just noticed that I have been talking about 'users' whereas in the past I think that I would have talked about 'members' and I think that is significant. In the past I think users, especially the regular contributors, had a sense of ownership of the site, a feeling of belonging that Chris and Phil did a great deal to undermine. It was those frequent and regular contributions to the forums that made the site look and feel vibrant and to be honest I don't know how that could be regenerated now after all this time. As a review site HT doesn't do the job for me and I will continue to look elsewhere for that sort of info and as a discussion forum then it is dying a slow death and I'm not sure what you can do to generate increased traffic with the new site design because the front page emphasises the reviews and I'm not sure how many people new to the site would even realise what a rich source of information the forums were and could be again.

SMa,

Many thanks for the reply, I am open to ideas around structure and feature implementation. Some of the above I agree with and some I do not. I am not here to listen to about what people in the past have done and have not done, I only look forward. Most of the traffic does not hit the homepage, but I completely understand your point as to whether you feel it is essential to decide whether it is a review or a forum website. Regardless of how the site was, if it had not become responsive the traffic would have died, this is up circa 40% on last year purely on the development alone. Re the comment about Chris above, that was actually his idea and drive prior to him concentrating on other things, so that development I have him to thank.

At the moment revenue is not a priority in the slightest so the path we take is dependent on what we feel is the best for the site, not the bottom line. You will see there is the ability to put a lot of advertising on the site and you will also see that that is not utilized.

I have a technology team behind this in house so we can look at implementing certain ideas/features that maybe some of the older members would appreciate and also value in line with what they loved back then (providing it is in interests of the site). However, the message is I am here to listen.

Please inbox me or share on here anything you feel will be beneficial..

Cheers

Lance

If you are only interested in reviews then you do need to publish them within a day or two of them being submitted. Most of us felt lucky if our review was posted at all! Of course this may well be something you have acted on already as I haven't checked for a long time. Although when i do check the forums the latest posts are few and far between. You need a team who will listen to those who use the forums and act upon it or show you have listened but have a different view ( and not just ignore any ideas). You do need to take a leap to compete with what has decimated HT- facebook. Carrying on as before and sticking fingers in ears didn't work before so it won't work now. This site had a huge following which was lost when it didn't move with the times.
I have to say that I don't find this format user friendly ( the forums ).
I would love to see HT rise up again. I was a passionate supporter of it. But it needs someone in charge who can respond to what people want.

I do think that it needs some form of dashboard as that does work well on other forums. Also, one thing that would be brilliant and to obtain a better experience is to add media to the forum and also the reviews. I cannot see anywhere where you can add photos and videos. Ok you can add links, but can you not upload photos and videos?

Also the messaging system needs a little work and the user experience when creating messages and posts on the forum needs tweaking.

MC

I wrote a long post the other day that got messed up. Sometimes when I get going, I can get rambling, so here goes.
Progress is a wonderful thing, but somewhere along the way, you sit down and consider what you've lost.

Having a speedy responsive site that requires drastic changes may be all well and good in technical terms, but if you lose the format that made the site popular in terms of ease of navigation and finding info quickly, it then becomes not user friendly, despite all the hidden technology.

I think SMa made a very good point. I have never considered myself as a user, and people don't stick around a website for a decade or more, unless it was offering them something different.
And there lies the crux of the matter. HT was different, it had a community, it stayed close to its founding ethos of holidaymakers helping other holidaymakers.
HT itself was founded by a disgruntled holidaymaker giving the general public a place to air their views and advise others. It truly was independent and it was never about sell, sell, sell.

I'm not going to harp on about the past, what's done is done, but as an owner you cannot hold the attitude that it's going to be your way, or no way. You can't alienate droves of people and ignore the team that made HT a big part of their lives, and in some cases it had taken over their lives in terms of Admin and Moderating.
I said I wasn't going to harp on about the past, but I have too, if we are going to understand what may be needed for the future, because off the top of my head I could list the things that I (we) have lost, in the name of progress.

1. A very friendly site with a tidy format that was easy to navigate.....sorry, but I do not like this 'set up'.

2. A photo/video gallery....and if FB has taught us anything, it's that people like to post photos/videos.
And while I'm on the subject of FB. I remember a thread where lots of members posted that they don't, and never will have a FB account, and I'm not too chuffed with the place either.

3. The Admin and Moderators who were involved on the boards, both in their respective roles, and still able to post and join in a conversation as a member.

4. The Themes: Christmas, Remembrance & Halloween..... Nobody else had these and members had the choice whether to stick with the original board preferences or these short changes during the year.
These could now be considered 'surplus to requirements' or too PC. However it was the little touches that made us different, and knowing that the owner had gone to the trouble to programme these themes for his members, and still had given them a choice.
The themes were probably before their time, because today I see websites out there implementing themes, albeit on a smaller scale.

5. An excellent Private Message system ( I have been informed by Lance that it will be addressed and improved, that's good to hear because what we have at the moment is elementary and pants).

6. A very easily navigated review section, where people couldn't wait to add their review ....knowing that it would only be vetted, solely to remove anything that could be libellous, and it would be in situ on the site within (sometimes) a matter of hours.

7. Things like having the opportunity (as a member) to set up a poll on certain subjects....usually in General Chat.

I'm sure I'll think of something else when I've finished typing.
Finally, I've met in real life some very nice people, thanks to HT. Some have actually become close friends...And I've lost contact with a lot more because they were alienated , banned or insulted. Yes, time does move people on, however they moved to another place to stay together.
Reading this, it must imply that we had one big happy family and a load of snowflakes as members, far from it, we had some debates that got quite heated, I personally have never (knowingly) held a grudge against anyone for having a different opinion.

It's difficult, I can understand why any owner would want to implement the latest technology, especially for those who walk around in life looking at the pavement .... sorry, I mean their phones. But somewhere along the way, you have to halt , ASK & LISTEN to your members/ users/ customers or whatever. It's not rocket science is it? because without those members, no site will survive.
Let's hope lessons have been learnt.
Sanji x

Not quite done.
Number 5, The private messages.
The standard that Van held as an ethical owner, he and his team would never read private messages, they were just that PRIVATE.
I believe that the board system in place at the time (phpBB3), it wouldn't let them gain access anyway, and it would take some law enforcement authority before Van would have to access the database & hand over the information exchanged privately between members.
To be told that private messages can (will) be read in the 'New Holiday Truths' in 2012. Well it killed the system for me.

This needs clarifying before we go any further, because chose how much you improve it, I for one will not be using it, if messages are not private.
Ta
Sanji

hear hear Sanji, though I doubt there will be any reply.

In fact this is the second time I've tried to post this and it's not being accepted! Trying again now.

Madsue

What would make you think it would fall on deaf ears when I specifically ask the questions at the start of the message? As I mentioned at the start I have no history with this site therefore all feedback is valuable for me.

So you are all aware we are working on some features so will update you as soon as. One is a media gallery but we need to make sure it is done correctly and is something everyone can use and share some real good content on. We are looking at different systems now. So for the record we will be implementing one.

Also we are in the process of implementing the addition of images and videos being able to be added to reviews AND forum posts. Obviously there is the odd bit of spam so we will need to make it spam proof as people will upload inappropriate content.

We need to address the messaging system which from UI perspective we will evolve to make it more useful.

TTFN

Lance

Not sure if I have missed it but you say you needed to make the site more responsive so could you define 'resposive' as my expierience is the site is nowhere near as esy to navigate or as visually attractive as the old site. HT used to be my fisrst call nearly every day but now I look in once a flood.

Nick

The website never worked on mobile devices, hence the traffic getting worse. It is now 'responsive' in that it 'responds' to any device and can be used on each and every device. This was needed as a result of a google request to penalise sites with no mobile functionality. HT never worked apart from on a desktop.

Re your other comments they are noted but as I said above, I was not involved or associated with older visions of HT so I cannot take any value from what you have said.

Lance

Sorry- duplicate

The traffic may be up on last year but it's certainly not busy.
However, I like the ideas you have.
Facebook did take away a lot of members especially as new ideas were not acted upon. The one thing a website has over a fb page is that it can be easier to access information. If you then also include photos on the forum then that is a huge plus. Even more important- photos and videos on the reviews. Links between the review and forums site will boost traffic for both.
Finally a more up to date messenger is a positive. I am pretty sure Van did not have access to everyone's messages. The admin and mod team definitely didn't. But the last owners apparently did and that really sunk the use of pms. People arranged elsewhere to communicate.
People who reply here are only doing so as they want ht to succeed again but the last owners could not deal with feedback that wasn't praise. Their responses lost members and eventually their team. You may not be interested in the past but hopefully you can learn from past mistakes and move ht in a positive direction again. We all want that.