Some people get all the best jobs. I would jump at the chance of visiting Australia for a fraction of the price which local authorities there are paying Oprah Winfrey – a reported $5 million dollars – to give its flagging tourist industry a much needed boost as visitor numbers have considerably declined following its hosting of the Olympics back in 2000.

This is obviously why Stephen Fry recently had a highly proclaimed tour in Australia recently, and even our UK’s favourite Come Dine With Me now dishes us up prime time Aussie dinners served by the ocean or poolside terraces to lure us Down Under.

But Oprah is not travelling alone, she is taking an entire audience of 300 and a crew of 150 with her. The idea is that her enthused audience will be emailing, blogging, twittering and telling the world how wonderful Australia is and encouraging millions of people to come on over and enjoy its fabulous coral reefs and hospitality for themselves. Even Sydney’s sacrosanct Opera House is being rebranded as “Oprah House” – they will do anything to get Oprah’s glowing endorsement showcased around the world!

Catherine Williams, one of the excellent speakers from the influencepeople social media advertising conference, told us about this. Australia is Catherine’s home country, and her government is obviously confident that it is going to work and will be money well spent. If I lived there, I might be tempted to apply for the $100,000 dream job to blog for the Westfield Shopping Centre; they want someone to get an interactive buzz going in fashion. I wonder when our shopping centres will follow suit!

I was all agog when we were later told at the conference that influential and high ranking bloggers in the UK were being paid good money to host advertising editorial blogposts on their website, and could earn as much as £1,500-£5,000 for one post, depending on their ranking. This is something Paul Coggins, the very smart MD at ebuzzing, has been doing; he knows the value that bloggers have in interacting with their readers, and ensures that the content matches the blog’s theme and is declared transparently as a promotional post. So bloggers, keep working at it, and there could be some real money in it for you one day.

*Meanwhile, TripAdvisor, a favourite site of mine and the world’s largest travel review site, faces an unprecedented backlash from a group of more than 400 hotels which is considering taking legal action  because of some salacious reviews.  They are joining forces to present a “group defamation action” and legal proceedings have been threatened unless some of the most wounding criticisms are removed within a fortnight. The action is being led by KwikChex, a Bournemouth-based reputation management firm.

While being a passionate advocate of online freedom of speech, I accept there might be instances when deliberately malicious comments might be posted on review sites, but I feel these are a minority, and would advise the hotels to reply and set the record straight. I admit I have been influenced by poor online hotel reviews, but I would feel more confident about their professional services if hotelliers did not ignore what customers were saying, and interacted.  They need to be aware about the importance of their online reputation and, like other businesses, track what is being said about them and deal with it.  I think anonymous comments which are salacious should be banned, that anyone posting a critical comment should do so openly.  Most internet users have a good idea that some people are always going to be hard to please anyway, and at the end of the day they will do further research and form their own balanced view.