100 Five Star Tripadvisor reviews for our Suffolk Holiday Cottages
This post dates all the way back to 2012, we now have many hundreds of reviews on many different review sites.
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A major milestone for my Suffolk holiday cottages! I’m delighted to announce that we have now hit 100 Five Star reviews on Tripadvisor. And that’s out of 100 reviews! Doesn’t get much better than that eh?
I’m fairly good at blowing my own trumpet but this one takes the biscuit! I offer no apologies other than to say I know it’s a bugle, not a trumpet but it was the closest I have!
I created a business from scratch and with the help of an awesome team, we now have 100 reviews on Tripadvisor, ALL of which are FIVE STARS! Nothing less. I am so chuffed!
I have worked my socks off here for the last six years turning a dilapidated farmhouse, a derelict barn and an overgrown meadow into seven luxurious, dog-friendly Suffolk holiday cottages, that have inspired 100 people to take time out of their day and give us FIVE STARS on one of the most trusted accommodation review sites on the planet! I spent many years banging my head against a wall getting planning permission and money but I did it (that isn’t me in the photo by the way!)
I made that happen! Anyone who doesn’t think I should say so, doesn’t know me, is free to not carry on reading, and as I said, I offer no apologies. I’ve literally given blood (quite a lot), sweat (a lot more!) and tears (yep, some) to this place and I’ve earnt those reviews. Feel free to read all 100 if you wish, along with the thousands of reviews on our website taken from our guest books, for which I am equally grateful.
As the reviews started coming in, I kept thinking that one day we’ll get a Four Star, or maybe even a One Star and I’m sure we will as you really cannot please everyone but no one can ever take away from me the fact that we got to 100, genuine guest reviews on Tripadvisor, without dropping a single star! No, we won’t stop trying to keep them all at Five Stars either. Didn’t I mention we have 100 Five Star Tripadvisor reviews? This is a group from the 80’s called Five Star. They have never stayed here or to my knowledge, ever heard of us but I thought I’d throw it in to ram home the point about us getting Five Stars!
My aim has always been to make my guests happy, that’s what I do. I don’t measure the success or otherwise of my business in financial terms at all. I look at occupancy and how satisfied those guests are. The first thing I do when guests leave is to look at their feedback. My ethos is genuinely to look after those two things and ensure that we get it right, because if I can’t make money that way then something isn’t right.
We’ve only been listed on Tripadvisor since January 2014. I was initially worried about actually going on there as it used to have a lot of bad press. I’d heard horror stories of places being slated on there by their competitors posing as guests and also of bad places getting rave reviews. From their friends! I didn’t want any part of that. Thankfully times have changed and Tripadvisor responded to this by ensuring that establishments had to confirm that a ‘guest’ was genuine otherwise they weren’t able to post a review. And added to that, I don’t have 100 friends!
All our reviews are genuinely from happy guests who have stayed here and taken their time to write about us on an independent site and rate us Five Stars! I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of this and how grateful I am to each of those guests for doing so.
Here’s the first and the hundredth reviews, just in case you don’t have time to read them all!
31st January 2014 – Sandra and Andy
“A most wonderful way to spend a few days with the family.”
“Could not rate it high enough. Beatiful quiet place. Thousands of DVDs in case you love movies. Breakfast basket that also contain home made bread! We stayed 3 days and cannot wait to come back again, which we did in September. Lovely bedroom, fire place, garden, cooking facilities. Everything was absolutely spot on! Even our baby girl enjoyed herself! Thank you Carl and the team!!!”
August 16th 2015 – Catherine
“Perfect and relaxing”
“We had a wonderful week in Alde Barn. It had everything we needed and more for a cosy, relaxing stay. The breakfast basket was much appreciated as was the coffee machine. We enjoyed sitting in the private garden and made good use of the extensive DVD library and the herb garden. The barn was in a great location for touring suffolk which is full of beautiful villages and lovely, not too strenuous walks. It was close to some excellent, independent food stores and farm shops and close enough to the coast for fresh fish and oysters. The barn was full of useful information about what to do and where to eat and shop. We loved our first visit to Suffolk – it is a real get away from it all destination and Alde Barn was the perfect base”
So how can I thank our lovely holiday cottage guests?
So, other than to maintain our standards and work diligently every week to keep our guests happy, what am I going to do to say thank you to all those people? Well I have decided to give them all a bottle of Champagne when they next stay, as well as giving back what I’ve called ‘100 for 100’.
The first three to re-book a break any time from now will each get £100 off! Yep, a £100 thank you.
No competition. Just my little way of saying thank you. This was not done as an incentive as none of those lovely guests knew they’d get anything in return and it never occurred to me that we would reach this amazing milestone. If you are one of those lovely 100 people, I will be emailing you but feel free to ring me to book!
How am I going to thank my lovely team that work so hard to keep the place looking great? Well, I’m taking them all out for dinner next week. It’s a tough life but someone’s gotta do it!
Thank you to all those who took the time to write such kind words and to all those who did the same in our guest books as we have well over a thousand of those!
As I write, we’ve actually now had 101 so I’m aiming for 200! Haha, you can’t please all of the people all of the time so I don’t expect we’ll hit that but I’m over the moon about getting to 100 and no one can ever take that away from me.
