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View Full Version : Tenerife Dining & Island Connections Restaurant Awards - fake!



jillfoo
03-06-2011, 16:15
Begin a foodie and now spending most of my time in Tenerife I was curious about the Tenerife Dining/Island Connections "awards".

Having written reviews about many restaurants in various places on the web about local restaurants I decided to vote

Imagine my surprise, then, when of my top 10 favourite restaurants in Tenerife only 3 are actually listed on Tenerife Dining and only 1 is actually in the awards (one that I would position around 6 or 7 in my top ten).

So I decided to do some digging to find out why.

TD would have you believe that they're a listing/review site open to everyone.

I sent them a message asking how restaurants were chosen. I got no reply.

I sent messages to a few people I know in restaurants in Tenerife and here are 3 of the replies I got (from different restauants):

"...and some of the people tell us they tell to Tenerife Dining to list us back more than a year, but we do not appear. Never they contacted with us."

"I think we have a basic entry on Tenerife Dining but we decided not to pay for their 'extra' packages to become a "featured" or "selected" restaurant. We were quoted between 250 a year and 250 a month for that. We've heard nothing about the competition - the first we knew about it was your email."

"We've had a listing on Tenerife Dining since it started. It was originally run by Regency Resorts; they own La Estancia and this was the only restaurant that ever appeared at the top of the listings, so it was basically a vehicle to advertise their own restaurant. For the rest, they pretty much copied everything verbatim from the current Que Bueno book at the time.

It was taken over a while ago by an independent company. They came to visit and asked if we wanted a paid for listing - several levels, from listings with photos to the flashy banners on the home page highlighting people like El Greco, Bianco and so on.

The latest attempt is the awards. We had an email telling us about the awards but to be able to enter you have to pay for a listing rather than just have a free one.

So as far as we're concerned the awards are pointless; it's like running in the Olympics but only against particular competitors willing to pay the most to enter rather than anyone with ability. Even if we'd paid for the advertising we'd choose not to participate for that reason - it should be all or nothing.

El Dia do the same thing around Easter time with a "Gastronomia" edition, but to even get in the running you have to advertise, starts at around 3000€.

We just ignored the email."

So there you go folks, it's all a con to drum up advertising trade for the promoter, namely Tenerife Dining!

Your votes are worthless!