[mbrookes]

I have just bought myself the latest BUG Australia 2004 book and I have to say I am impressed. I’m off travelling soon for a year and will judging for myself if the book is as it says.
I don’t know about any of you lot, but when I read a hostel review they confuse the hell out of me. How do we know they are genuine and not just a member of staff giving a rave review. Or even a rival hostel's staff saying that its got bedbugs. What would be a good idea is that there was actual BUG reviewers that have a genuine review. I know there are some already but we cant tell who they are. Can they have a symbol next to the review so we can tell?

[Tim Uden]

Hi,

Sorry about the delay in replying to this. I was on the road in Ireland and the UK doing research for next year's BUG Britain & Ireland guidebook and I haven't been able to spend as much time on these forums as I would normally like to.

First of all, thanks for buying the book. I hope you find it really useful on your trip.

The hostel reviews on the website and the book a quite different. All the reviews in the book have been reviewed by a BUG reviewer, but most reviews on this website have mostly only been reviewed by other travellers although a lot of hostels (especially in Australia and New Zealand) also have a review by a BUG reviewer.

On the website the BUG reviews are presented in a totally different format to reviews submitted by travellers and they appear before all the other reviews.

If a hostel on the website has the following text under the hostel's address then there is no official BUG review for that hostel:

This hostel has yet to be visited and reviewed by a BUG hostel reviewer. If you have stayed at this hostel, please feel free to add your own comments.

If it doesn't have this text then it will have a BUG review below the address that will usually be broken into categories such as location, atomsphere & character and price.

The BUG review appears above all the other reviews.

BUG's reviews do not count toward the main star rating although reviews written within the past year will have our own star rating system (similar to the one in the BUG guidebooks). At the moment BUG's own star rating is only available for hostels in New Zealand plus Barcelona and Madrid, but hostels in other European cities and in Australia have been rated and will go online within the next few months.

These recent BUG hostel reviews (those with our own star rating), also include the text "Reviewed and rated by BUG" as part of the star rating graphic.

Have a look at some of the hostel reviews in New Zealand (in the BUG Pacific website) to get a better idea of what I mean.

By the way, I wouldn't take the odd accusation about bed bugs too seriously. All hostels (and even five-star hotels) get bed bugs from time to time and an isolated case of bed bugs is not neccesarily the hostel's fault (or the traveller's fault).