Reputation Monitoring Case Study

How Reputation Monitoring Potentially Saved a Resort Millions

For those of you who might not be familiar with the concept of resort villa ownership, this is a program where people buy a unit at a resort that they can use whenever they like or put it in the rental pool to make some money. Owners typically market their units and, in some cases, try to find creative ways of making back their investments. This story is about one owner's attempt at being creative.

This owner was a mother who understood that sometimes people want to take a break from the kids on vacation. What better way to do that than to leave your kids in an on-property day care center? The trouble comes when you start operating a day care center out of a resort villa without proper licensing or management approval.

In this case the owner had purchased all of the things you would think you need for a daycare center. According to their Craigslist ad they had diapers from size 1-5, wipes, snacks and meals. They had a toll-free number and were working on a new website.

At 11:29am they placed an ad with Craigslist. The IPG reputation monitoring service discovered the ad by 5:27pm and the client was notified. This allowed the client to take action before noon the next day and have the day care center closed down before the end of the day.

Imagine the liability exposure if something were to happen to one of the kids while at this unauthorized day care center. Since this was occurring on the resort property it is likely the resort could become party to a lawsuit. Whether or not the resort ultimately prevailed, the cost of the suit and the lost brand equity as a result could easily be measured in the millions of dollars.