Folks are TripAdvisor may be somewhat red-faced these days after awarding four stars to Schrute Farms, lavishly praising its food. The only problem: it does not exist.
The farm “belongs” to Dwight Schrute of the TV-NBC series “The Office.”
In September 2007, the show asked to use TripAdvisor, a travel Web site, in an episode in which Dwight turns his beet farm into a bed and breakfast.
Christine Petersen, the chief marketing officer for TripAdvisor, told The New York Times:
“We don’t have a big marketing budget and don’t do TV ads. This was the big time.”
TripAdvisor set up a review page, apparently thinking it would be good for a laugh or two.
Paul Lieberstein, who wrote the episode, called “Money,” never even went back to the site afterward. “We thought it would be fun, but then we didn’t think about it anymore,” he said in an interview.
But Schrute Farms is still doing big business — it has more than 600 reviews, or more than many major Manhattan hotels.
But not everyone gets the joke.
Recently, TripAdvisor added a caveat explaining that Schrute Farms was fictional. Petersen said:
“We had a complaint from someone who had wanted to go there.”
By David Wilkening
