Starwood officials say they saw plenty of opportunities to jump into the online conversation, but were reluctant. They say they didn't want to look like they were muscling in on free speech. But once the company made its first posting in the Starwood area of FlyerTalk's bulletin board Dec. 1, the reaction was surprisingly positive. Monitoring the site became such a top priority that it was deemed essential to find someone who could handle it full time. In came Sanders, plucked from the relatively obscure ranks of customer complaint responders.
Sanders loves lurking.
Instead of getting chewed out over the phone all day as he did in his former job, Sanders says he now remedies travel headaches of hotel guests in the anonymity of cyberspace. Sanders spends most of his workday perusing the messages posted on the Starwood site. He also checks the bulletin boards of about a dozen other hotel chains to check for references to Starwood. He has gotten to know his counterparts at competing hotel chains such as Hilton, which have their own lurkers performing the same task. Sanders is even making a few online friends among the travelers.