Are Tourist Railways "welcoming" enough?

Given the premise of the thread (Are Tourist railways welcoming enough?), there does seem to be a bit of an acceptance of trying to rubbish adverse comments if they come from mere paying passengers!

Why assume that someone writing a comment about train heating is being capricious - they have, after all, bothered to take the time to write down the comment. They are explicitly making a comment about something that matters to them, and their perception of the enjoyment of the day. So why try to rubbish what they are saying just because they are an "amateur" on a social media site rather than a trained tourism professional?

It feels to me that comments about train heating are exactly the kind of thing that analysing feedback from thousands of visitors will reveal that may easily be missed by a scheme like that from Visit England - after all, if the Visit England assessor happens to make their annual visit some time in the summer, train heating won't be an issue. Even if they visited in the winter, they may have ridden in a different carriage or a different set in which the heating was working better. Even the best trained assessor cannot be everywhere at once, and so will miss things - things that clearly are of significant importance to visitors who actually pay the bills.

Tom

 

Quite. The lets rubbish the messenger posts say a lot about people's attitude to customer service.

 

Mention of East Grinstead brings to mind the Bluebell Railway's experience that while the extension has increased custom (thus income) it has also created more operating cost (thus expenditure) hence any railway considering an extension (e.g. GWSR to Broadway) has to ensure that such extra cost generates an income greater than that cost else the extension becomes a liability rather than an asset.

 

Tripadvisor certainly has its drawbacks, but it has become the most popular source of travel ratings and therefore must be taken seriously.

I've been invited to join Visit England's scheme regularly over the years and have declined, mainly for two reasons- it costs (I'm famously tight!) and anything that has to be paid for by an attraction is unlikely to be trusted by a potential visitor to be truly independent. That's assuming that said visitor can even find it on Google. The issue of the actual inspection on which the rating is based is also relevant; I don't want to be rated against the same checklist as the Tower of London etc., or even the IOWSR; our set-up is unique and I'd rather trust the opinions of ordinary visitors, capricious though they may be.

The only other reviews that I take seriously are Google reviews, mainly because they, along with Tripadvisor, are easily accessible both to the reviewer and the potential visitor. The trouble with Google reviews is that, unlike Tripadvisor, there is no minimum length of review and therefore often little detail. On the other hand, not everyone is a born travelwriter and some find composing a Tripadvisor review challenging.

Returning to the subject of capricious reviews, we currently have 60 Tripadvisor reviews, 45 excellent, 10 good, 2 average, 2 poor and nil terrible. The interesting ones are the average and poor examples; one person gave a glowing review, but then rated us average whilst another, a local, merely damned us with faint praise. Of the "poor" reviews, one chap comprehensively rubbished us, but then admitted that his son had enjoyed himself and didn't want to leave. The prize goes to the lady, connected to a competing attraction, who visited as part of a private party, some of whom persuaded one of our drivers to give them an extra cab ride in a diesel loco after he had finished his booked turn. The driver had lit a cigarette and, thinking that he was among friends, didn't bother to extinguish it, thus having praised the railway in general the reviewer rated us "poor".

 

Pedant mode on.

One missing somewhere.

Pedant mode off

That is an excellent score in my opinion.

 

Maths was never my strong point! Still, Tripadvisor says it's 60, one having been added yesterday though, to support what has been said up-thread, it was a somewhat delayed review of our Santa Specials.

 

This is a typical gricers response - if the visitors were cold it was their own fault for expecting the train to be heated!

Ever visito should know that: "The carriage heating commences as soon as the condensed steam escapes via the drip valvesThis can be accelerated, as has sometimes happened when I have been a Toddington, by opening the Steam valve of the last carriage, whereby litres of sub 100 degree C water is allowed to escape. Not something our Guards or TTI's are trained to do."

Serve them right for not coming dressed for unheated trains.

 

Interestingly when I was trained for steam heat (too many years ago), I was told to always open the steam heat hose cock on the last coach. Then leave it open until only vapour was coming out.

It's these little details that were helpful, a bit like always jiggling the drip valve under the hose coupling head before trying to uncoupling the hoses.

 

Gentlemen,

Dare I say it but I fear you are being a bit cheapskate! The "belong" fee is quite modest but the implications of what the assessor's report (a comprehensive document) comtains may not be. I truly did not want to be specific but I will be to make my point.

The bottom half of Havenstreet car park was un-surfaced, dusty in dry weather, muddy in wet and pot holed all the time. Not the sort of thing enthusiasts tend to notice but tourism professionals do. It cost £60,000 to sort out (not bad as this included an interceptor trap to prevent discharge of hydrocarbons into a brook) and the assessor was 200% right.

Sadly, I am not familiar with Mangapps but I do know Sheffield Park and the car park reminds me strongly of that at Havenstreet before it was sorted out. First impressions matter and whilst I don't suppose there is a single specific comment in Tripadvisor about the car park plenty of people will have got dusty/muddy over the years. These are not gricers turned on by poking around scrap heaps but the general public who fork out a fair deal of money which could be spent at any other attraction.

Just down the road from Havenstreet is Monkey Haven, an attraction rated similarly by English Heritage. Both compete, in effect, for the tourist spend.

Paul H

 

If any attraction needs to spend money to be told their car park is not up to scratch there is something wrong with their management.

 

The quality of parking is a widespread inadequacy in the tourist railway scene, be it for motor coaches or private cars. One suspects there is an unwillingness amongst railway enthusiasts to admit that most visitors come by road, even when they do so themselves.

PH

 

Where on earth do you get that idea from!? I wouldn't disagree that there are plenty of heritage railway car parks that don't really do it, but equally, that's exactly the sort of thing that is picked up on by tripadvisor if folk think it's important to their visit, all for free.

 

I do wonder, let do an exercise, at railway "A" the car park needs resurfacing, at a cost of £20'000, but at the same time their operating department need another coach put into traffic at the same overall cost, so do they decide to spend on the car park and on tidying up the sits to attract more custom , or do they instead spend that money bringing another coach into service that they may not need 70 percent of the time ? So what should they do ?

 

I "get" it from almost every prospectus for an extension that mentions "main line connection" as a prospective benefit. Andrewshimmin calls it "romanticism". I call it "W.I.B.N."

Paul H

 

I've trawled through as many of the negative TripAdvisor Bluebell reviews as I could find and I've yet to find one regarding the car park. If people can take the time to gripe about issues that have affected their day, I would expect people to gripe about the car park if that was an issue of importance to them.
With this thread and others I get the impression that to you the world of heritage railways is simply black and white, the Paul Hitch way and the wrong way, when in fact there are many shades in between. Congratulations to the IoWSR on its Visit England accolade but surely the greater accolade is that of a satisfied visitor who tells their peers what a good time they had, by social media and other methods, and makes a repeat visit.

 

A. you are personalising again.
B.I had already made the point that it was unlikely there would be any specific comments about car parking. Many thousands visit tourist railways a year and if they all used Tripadvisor it would be as long as a three decker novel. It's all about first impressions and the first thing visitors see and experience is the car park. Unless the car park is manned, the first person they will encounter is the booking clerk. Things can go wrong here too.

PH

 

I assume that the car-park at Haven Street now resembles that at the local supermarket; all very nice, but I wonder if it really has very much to do with the overall visitor experience or the number of return visits. I have never had a negative comment regarding the car-park at Mangapps, in reviews or otherwise, though it's nothing special. I've had quite a few positive comments regarding its size, which leads me to believe that available space is more important to most visitors than tarmac and white lines.

A recurring theme on our Tripadvisor reviews is that the line could be longer and that there could be more steam. Fine, but since neither is practically possible or affordable, I just take note of it and carry on as before. The opinions of visitors or outside bodies are interesting and can be useful, but if they become the chief consideration in deciding on capital projects, there's something wrong. My priority, should finance become available, is more covered space, though no reviewer has ever suggested it.

 

Why? As you say, it's all about first impressions and I'd expect those sort of things to be picked up on by folk who use tripadvisor if it was a problem.

 

Given the 'interesting' use of capitalisation in this post, I find the last sentence of it somewhat ironic. I think the expression is 'hoist by one's own petard'

 

Hardly surprising as it's you who in the main bangs on about the failings of railways other than your own. Put your head above the parapet and expect to get shot at by those who disagree.
I presume your dismissal of TripAdvisor means I should ignore all the positive reports your beloved IoWSR gets. I know it's about first impressions and given the wide range of complaints that people post about their visits to various heritage railways, if poor car parking was their first impression I would expect to see it feature in complaints.