I own the Otago Peninsula*

The Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice award I (evidently) ‘won’ in 2023 after ‘my’ Otago Peninsula was rated in the world’s top 10% of travellers’ attractions. High praise.

*No, I don’t.

In a previous life in the early 2010s I operated a business that found me heavily involved with TripAdvisor.

Back then, for reasons I think I could only explain if I was drunk I ended up ‘purchasing’ a portion of New Zealand’s land mass off TripAdvisor, quasi-masquerading as the owner of the Otago Peninsula.

(Hint: no one person owns it, or ever could own it. The Peninsula’s home to about 10,000 people who live on its 85 or so sq/kms.

I ‘bought’ the Peninsula as a bit of a joke at the time, to make a point^. And the fact TripAdvisor still seems to feel I’m the owner of a 20 km long peninsula on NZ’s east coast helps, I think, reinforce the point I was making.)

Every so often I log into my TripAdvisor account and write a reply to a couple of the 1,000s of travellers who’ve taken the time to leave their review of ‘my’ peninsula.

Sometimes my responses are quite flowery, even by my standards, but almost all the time I’ve got no idea what I’m actually responding to. That said, I write in the hope I give a bit of a lift to the reviewer; help them feel just a little bit loved.

So you can imagine my delight when, back in August 2023 I received an email from TripAdvisor telling me that ‘my’ attraction - the Otago Peninsula - has been rated as one of the top 10% of attractions of anywhere in the world!

Well, bugger me.

After all that work I put in (meaning… none) ‘my’ peninsular (again, let me be 100% clear. It. Is. Not. Mine) found its way into the top 10% of global attractions.

I was speechless.

Almost.

NB: This content was originally carried on twitter/’X’ in August 2023. The original post, along with a handful of the back-and-forth responses it generated, are here. Also, I’ve owned a small property on the Peninsula since 2001, so my responses to reviews are not totally naïve.

^If memory serves, the purchase price was a whopping AUD$1.00