We are going to cancel the cheating votes in this contest.

9th Feb 2012

Dear memory sharers

Thank you all so much for sharing these great travel experiences, photos and videos.

However, we have recently noticed some suspicious votes that were either computer generated or in other means of cheating. We will be contacting suspicious cheating sharers, and will cancel the illegitimate votes. Further cheating behavior could result in deleting the cheating entries.

This memory contest was initiated with a good will, with the idea actually inspired by our customers who have enthusiastically written back to us sharing the special moments during their tours. So we decided to put up this memory contest as our first community event where people from different part of the world can share their memorable travel moments, meanwhile to appreciate others' sharing and get inspired. As the organizer we also make our contributions to this event by providing things that would be memorable to share, including free Tibet and Thailand trips, and the ethnic handicrafts that were actually ordered from minority craftspeople living in a Southwest China province - Guizhou.

We came with a good will and hope everyone can enjoy the happiness of sharing and appreciating others' memorable experience. So everyone please play fairly. For the sharers who have shared with passions and good will, we won't let you down. We may amend a few terms of this contest to make it fairer for selecting winners. If you have any thoughts regarding fairly rewarding the quality entries, please email to emktg@chinaodysseytours.com. We are looking forward to your opinions.

Sincerely yours

Community Event Team

China Odyssey Tours

Specification about the change of vote count.

10th February, 2012

Dear memory sharers

Thank you all so much again for contributing to this community event.

You must have noticed that your entries' vote counts have changed in appearance. We are now displaying 3 different vote counts (valid, total, and pending vote counts) instead of the previous one total vote count. It may be confusing to you, but DO NOT worry. Please take some time to read the rest part of this announcement, and you would understand what we are doing now is to protect the fairness of this contest.

1. What is a valid vote?

A valid vote is what we can obviously see that it was voted by a real human, and this person has not double voted a same memory entry.

2. What is a pending vote?

A pending vote is what we cannot obviously see it as a valid vote. And we need further evidences to decide whether it is valid or not.

3. Why so many of my votes are now pending?

We are now reviewing all votes manually, though with technical support it still takes time. As long as we have gather enough evidences we will make a pending vote valid. Please do not worry too much about your pending votes. As long as they were voted legitimately by real people without double voting to a same memory entry, they will turn valid soon.

4. Will and when will the pending votes be canceled?

The part of the pending votes that can be obviously identified as either computer generated or double voting will be canceled immediately when being reviewed. Meanwhile we will email inform the memory sharers who own those votes.

The part of the pending votes that are neither obviously valid nor cheating, we will email contact both the voters and the memory sharers who own the votes. If the vote cannot be justified as valid, it will be canceled.

The process of reviewing the votes could last to 9th March, approximately one and a half week after public voting. When vote reviewing is end, only the valid votes will be counted.

Please everyone understand that the only reason we take this hard approach to review all votes is to protect the original nature of this event, which is to share, appreciate, and value the memorable travel experience not only from ourselves but also from other travelers around world.

Please also accept our sincerest apology for being inexperience in organizing this first community event that may have caused discomfort to some people. We will sure make hard improvement in our future events, and we really like your valuable opinions.

As we have mentioned in the last announcement, we may amend a few terms of this contest to make it fairer for selecting winners. If you have any thoughts regarding fairly rewarding the quality entries, please email to emktg@chinaodysseytours.com. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours

Community Event Team

China Odyssey Tours

Proposal of refining the winner selection process of Memory Contest

21st February, 2012

Dear memory sharers

We are so honored and thankful to all of your beautiful memories contributed to this event. Travel broadens the mind, and we all have something to learn from one another. Everyone is the winner when many people get inspired by the wonderful places and different cultures in the photos, videos, and the words from your gentle sharing. What can make this memory contest meaningful is not who win the big prizes, but to feel enjoyed during sharing and appreciating a memorable moment.

In accordance to our initiative of this contest, we have been working hard to keep this contest as fair to the majority participants as possible. We are so thankful to the honest suggestions from many of our dear sharers, and now make following proposal.

Proposal of refining the winner selection process

We propose to divide the winner selection process into two rounds.

ROUND 1: Public voting. End on 29 February 2012 as originally planned. Top 18 entries based on those receiving the highest number of valid votes by the cut-off date of 29 February 2012, will each be awarded the 3rd. prize - $1000 value ethnic handicrafts.

ROUND 2: Penal of judges to decide the final winners. Start in early March 2012. There will be 20 finalists in the second round. 10 finalists are the top10 entries in the ROUND 1 based on the highest valid public votes. Plus Odyssey Tours select another 10 entries from the rest of all memory entries based on quality and meaningfulness. Total = 20 finalists.

We will invite some reputable editors, bloggers, and journalists from travel related websites or magazines, as well as some qualified applicants from our customers to comprise a panel of judges. We will have a page to introduce the judges.

We are now reviewing all votes manually, though with technical support it still takes time. As long as we have gather enough evidences we will make a pending vote valid. Please do not worry too much about your pending votes. As long as they were voted legitimately by real people without double voting to a same memory entry, they will turn valid soon.

Each judge has 5 votes in the second round. Every time a judge votes an entry, he or she will make a comment on why the entry desires this vote. The most voted finalist wins the 1st Prize - $10,000 Tibet Tour. The second most voted finalist wins the 2nd Prize - $6000 Thailand Tour.

Please kindly vote for our proposal before Sunday 26 February on this page: http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/community/currentevents/poll21feb.php We will make final modification on the terms of memory contest according to majority's opinion.

A further explanation of above proposal

This event was initiated with the idea to create interactions between our customers, the real travelers from all around the world, through sharing and appreciating each other's travel memories. Everyone, including us, makes contributions to it like a community, and all together to turn a single trip of a small group of people to an eye-opening experience for many people. Hence online interaction was considered as an important part of the contest, including allowing people to show preferences by giving votes, and express their opinions by leaving comments.

After voting started, negativity of public voting has shown. Some participants have argued that public voting gives those who have a large social network unfair advantage over others. Thus quality of the entries would not be necessary for winning this contest. It leaves a room to injustice.

As the organizer of this event, we are responsible to keep this event in its original nature, and we feel we should listen to the voice of majority. Many participants have replied to our first two announcements and suggested that a fairer way of selecting the winners is to turn the voting contest to a drawing contest, or in-house voting by an appointed panel of judges. We thank sincerely to all of your opinions and suggestions. However, to cancel the public voting will create another means of unfairness to those who have already make effort to promote their memory entries. This is why our proposal still keeps public voting for ROUND 1, and rewards the participants based on number of votes.

Though public voting is not sound for judging the entry quality, it is still a partial indicator. This is why we propose to send the top10 straight to the ROUND 2. Another 10 finalists picked by Odyssey Tours' in-house selection conducted solely based on the entries' quality. The panel of judges will then decide which two of the finalists win the 1st and 2nd prizes based on the entries' quality and meaningfulness.

Last but not least, we hope everyone can take time to appreciate every memory shared in this event. When we forget the votes and the prizes for a while, we would see all the touching moments in these shared photos, videos, and words. This is our first time effort in organizing a community event. As the organizer, we sincerely apologize for our inexperience and the flaws during the process of this contest. We will sure make hard improvement in our future events.

Please kindly vote for our proposal before Sunday 26 February on this page: http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/community/currentevents/poll21feb.php We will make final modification on the terms of memory contest according to majority's opinion.

Sincerely yours

Community Event Team

China Odyssey Tours
Indochina Odyssey Tours

Winner selection process (finalized)

28st February, 2012

Dear memory contestants

Thank you all again for participating in the memory contest. By Monday 27 February 2012, 148 (40.11%) memory contestants have voted for our Proposal of refining the winner selection process: 130 agreed (87.84 %), 18 disagreed (12.16 %). Some of the disagreed voices also provided suggestions to further refine the winner selection process. We will respect the opinion of the majority, and incorporate some of these suggestions. The final process of winner selection is now announced as following

Winner selection process (finalized)

ROUND 1: End on 29 February 2012.

Public voting winners: Top 18 entries based on those receiving the highest number of valid votes by the cut-off date of 29 February 2012, will each be awarded the 3rd. prize - $1000 value ethnic handicrafts. Top 10 public voting winners will also be the finalists in the ROUND 2.
Odyssey-picks winners: Odyssey Tours selects another 10 entries as odyssey-picks winners to enter the ROUND 2, will each be awarded the 3rd. prize as well. These 10 finalists will be selected solely based on memory quality and meaningfulness, ignoring the vote counts. If an odyssey-picks winner is from one of the Top11-Top18 highest voted, the contestant will receive the 3rd. prize only once.

ROUND 2: Early March 2012.

Total 20 finalists (Top 10 public voting winners plus 10 Odyssey-picks winners) will compete for the two grand prizes in the second round.
We will invite some reputable editors, bloggers, and journalists from travel related websites or magazines, as well as some qualified applicants from our customers to comprise a panel of judges. We will have a page to introduce the judges.
Each judge has 5 votes in the second round. Every time a judge votes an entry, he or she will make a comment on why the entry desires this vote. The most voted finalist wins the 1st Prize - $10,000 Tibet Tour. The second most voted finalist wins the 2nd Prize - $6000 Thailand Tour.

Once again, we hope everyone can take time to appreciate the every memory shared in this event. Just enjoy all these moments in the photos, videos, and words.

Sincerely yours

Community Event Team

China Odyssey Tours
Indochina Odyssey Tours