YouTuber asks for free hotel room -Gets refused!

[Crown]

• Elle Darby sent an email to the owner of the Charleville Lodge Hotel in Dublin
• The 22-year-old asked for a free stay in exchange for social media promotion
• Owner Paul Stenson poured scorn on the request and posted the email online
• Ms Darby responded with a YouTube video saying his actions led to her being bullied by online trolls

A YouTube vlogger has become embroiled in a row with a hotel owner after asking for a free stay in exchange for promotion on social media.

Elle Darby, 22, of Bath, Somerset, wrote to Paul Stenson, the owner of the White Moose Café and Charleville Lodge Hotel in Dublin.

She asked about a 'possible collaboration' involving free accommodation for her and her partner, who were planning to visit for an early Valentine's Day weekend.

'I would love to feature you in my Youtube videos/dedicated Instagram stories/posts to bring traffic to your hotel and recommend others to book up in return for free accommodation,' she wrote.

But her note was greeted with disdain by Mr Stenson, who not only poured scorn on the request but also posted the exchange online - and has now banned bloggers from his hotel.


Her email:

The hotel's reply on facebook:

Transcript of the hotel's reply because it's a bit hard to read the screenshot:

*******************

"Dear Social Influencer (I know your name but apparently it’s not important to use names),

Thank you for your email looking for free accommodation in return for exposure. It takes a lot of balls to send an email like that, if not much self-respect and dignity.

If I let you stay here in return for a feature in your video, who is going to pay the staff who look after you? Who is going to pay the housekeepers who clean your room? The waiters who serve you breakfast? The receptionist who checks you in? Who is going to pay for the light and heat you use during your stay? The laundering of your bed sheets? The water rates? Maybe I should tell my staff they will be featured in your video in lieu of receiving payment for work carried out while you’re in residence?

Lucky for us, we too have a significant social media following. We have 186k followers on our two Facebook pages, an estimated 80k on our Snapchat, 32k on Instagram and a paltry 12k on our Twitter, but Jesus Christ, I would never in a million years ask anyone for anything for free. I also blog a bit (www.paulvstenson.com), which as far as I’m aware is another way of saying “write stuff on the internet”. The above stats do not make me any better than anyone else or afford me the right to not pay for something everyone else has to pay for.

In future, I’d advise you to offer to pay your way like everyone else, and if the hotel in question believes your coverage will help them, maybe they’ll give you a complimentary upgrade to a suite. This would show more self-respect on your part and, let’s face it, it would be less embarrassing for you. Here is a little video I produced which you may learn from: http://bit.ly/2mKTDTD

Best regards,

Paul Stenson
www.charlevillelodge.ie

P.S. The answer is no.

********************



Her reaction

Her reaction to the hotel's reply? Playing the victim card and making a video about it of course!

Comments on facebook

Links and all sources:


Story in the news: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...logger-accuses-Dublin-hotel-bullying-her.html

YouTuber's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1CUhQQjVS13V6cNKJyePDg
Hotel's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CharlevilleLodgeHotel/


Update to story ( Jan 22nd 2018) - In another fantastic twist, the hotel owner has taken exception to her playing the victim card (since he never identified her in his rant) and has now invoiced her for over 5 million euros for all the publicity that he has given her lol.

The hotel and cafe proprietor has now sent Ms Darby, who has 87,000 YouTube subscribers and 76,000 Instagram followers, an invoice for the publicity she has received in the wake of their exchange going viral.

The invoice states that she is being charged for 'the provision of features in 114 articles across 20 countries with a potential reach of 450 million people', and that the publicity Mr Stenson has obtained for her would be valued at €4.3m plus VAT.



He also posted a picture of a jug containing 'tears of bloggers' after getting attacked on social media when he posted his email exchange with Ms Darby online.

Source / full article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5297031/Dublin-hotel-sends-YouTuber-INVOICE-5-289-000.html


_____________________________

Your thoughts ?

Thoughts on all this?

Looking at socialblade - She's a medium-sized channel at best. Her videos seems to get 20k-30k views and her whole channel gets about 20k views per day (pre-scandal). Her video would have cost the hotel more than it would bring in. As a business owner, I understand the hotel's frustration in their reply but having said that, I can't help thinking they have shot themselves in the foot a bit. - They now have an army of entitled YouTubers on their backs.

Thoughts ?!

 

[DigiBox]

She didn't care about the hotel, she didn't want to help them or promote them etc. She just wanted to push her luck and get free stuff because she is a 'youtuber', Really she should have just taken no for an answer instead of making this public outcry.

 

[The BBQ Chef]

Asking any Hotel for a free room on Valentines day is insane. She clearly is no way near big enough for that.
His response was out of order though, should of just e-mailed it too Her instead of going public. Nothing good can come of that.

 

[MyBigBrain]

I thought that her email was polite and to the point. She asked if he would like to do a collaboration - she would get free accommodation in return for doing a video/vlog/Instagram thing about his hotel. His reply was snarky and posting online her private email to him was spiteful. If he thought the deal wouldn't be mutually beneficial, he could have written 'no thanks' as a reply and deleted her email. From his response, I would avoid his hotel and not use written communications with him, because he will not hesitate to make public anything he doesn't like.

 

[Gaijillionaire]

Served!!

 

[KatyAdelson]

If I were him, I would have replied nicely with "no" through email. If she went public with it and started to create negativity, only then would I post something more public. Chances are, she would have never gone public with it, and she would have just moved on to the next hotel.

I understand why he said "no," but I don't understand why he posted it on his business facebook page. Maybe he gets a lot of these blogger freebie begging emails, and this particular case caused him to blow a fuse? Even still, I would have a copy-paste "no" answer to send back if I were getting a bunch of emails like this.

Edit: So I just watched Paul's influencers? video that he directed and included in his facebook reply, and it's awesome lol. That guy does have talent, that's for sure.

 

[Uncle Eggnog]

THIS is absolutely ridiculous... what gives this woman any right to ask such a stupid question to try and sponge a free weekend break???
Jesus I work 12 hour shifts busting my balls off, what makes her any better than me believing she has the right to free hotel stays? Absolutely disgusting behaviour.

this woman is no better than anybody else and should have to pay her way like the rest of us do!

Shocking honestly...

 

[PictureFIT]

I'm a firm believer of "it doesn't hurt to ask." I don't think there's anything wrong with her asking at all. Sure, she might have been reaching way out of her boundaries, especially for her size, but I can respect the audacity to ask. Hotel dude is projecting entitlement, imo.

 

[CristyTango]

I mean I can see how she came across as entitled, but she was polite the way she asked. I also see the owner's view in this- he's not wrong. I think there would have been maybe a better way to go about this for all parties involved, and yeah people on the internet are intense so maybe he did himself some harm in that way. At the same time, those people probably weren't going to his hotel to begin with so he didn't lose out I guess. I don't know. I probably stand more on the owner's side just because she isn't really big enough to be making requests like that- 100,000 MAYBE. Maaaaybe.

 

[OrbitGuy]

Yeah I have to say I also don't feel like there was anything inherently wrong with her making a business offer to them, even if they didn't see value. I don't think her channel was too small to be trying either, she posted almost back to back million view months before this.

The hotel owner claims she was asking for something for free, it's pretty hard to know from her initial message what the details would have been but it sounded to me like she was trying to negotiate a deal... A shoutout or especially a full sponsored video from even a mid sized influencer isn't worth nothing...to the right company of course. Obviously the big knock against her value is that her channel focus isn't super related to hotels or traveling. It's understandable they didn't see value in it because her channel's focus is a bit too wide perhaps for them.

This gets into a whole other can of worms, in that it's just so tricky trying to "value" an influencer and put a number on how much their collaboration is worth, in many cases I don't even think subscribers is always a good metric to use. There are channels with a lot of subs that really don't have the same influence as smaller channels with more active/loyal subs or that pull a lot more views or have a narrow audience. Especially, from a business standpoint subscribers does not really equal their "value" to a possible collaboration partner to me it's more relevancy 1st then views, then subs. If they are viewing it like an advertisement then the views they get on average should be more important then their subscribers who may or may not be regularly watching. I just don't know if a lot of businesses even know how to properly value YouTubers yet considering each one is so different.

I dunno, it just bugs me that subscribers/followers is the main metric for judging how successful someone is being an influencer. I could name some small channels that do an exceptional job of promoting products to a very narrow audience and they are probably very successful at translating those to sales. There are some big sub count channels who I don't think would be very effective at generating sales for a lot of things.

I don't know why they tried to devalue the potential value she probably does have to other comapnies rather than just saying they didn't think her content would translate to sales for them.