I have noticed that if I submit a nice beach, with beautiful blue water, with beach chairs and sun umbrellas, the AI always rejects the nomination. In my view these are great to socialise and to do some swimming, so they make perfect wayspots, but it seems Emily does not agree. I have appealed the last one, curious if people will have a different view.
Can you share the nomination with us? It will help us try to figure out what happened and why.
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I would include more info about the cabanas and chairs that one can use on the beach, as that would make it seem like a more appealing place to be social at. Maybe having a title that focuses more on the cabanas and less on the beach could be helpful, such as “Cabanas at (Insert Resort Name Here) Beach”, as cabanas are similar to picnic shelters, just usually on a beach.
It’s possible that ML is seeing this as just a natural feature, that being the water, and the cabanas could look like trees to it. If the appeal doesn’t get accepted, you may want to resubmit with a main photo that has less of the water in it and more of the cabanas and chairs in it. Even a photo of just one of the cabanas for the main photo should work
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No, I’ve tried two times, if the appeal fails, I’ll just leave it like that. But I’ll post the result of the appeal when I get it.
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What a gorgeous place! My guess is that the ML (machine learning) model has not seen many beaches and can’t identify what you are submitting. I would try a photo focused on one of the cute cabanas. Something centered something like this:
It might be able to at least recognize it as something that is potentially eligible.
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Are you unable to go back and take a new photo, or crop the photo you already have to focus on the cabanas? I just don’t think this is something to give up on, just something that needs to be focused more on the cabanas and not the beach.
I’m here for a few more days, I may give it one final attempt (but I’ll wait to see what the appeal will do)
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You may want to submit before hearing back from the appeals team. Once you have submitted, you can then put the new nomination on hold. If the appeals team does accept, then you can withdrawn the nomination; if they reject, you can move the new nomination into the queue.
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Also, if you have enough submission slots to ‘waste’, then try a couple of submissions with different photos (different emphasis, different content), putting both on hold as soon as you upload them.
Good tips! However the appeal as already been denied. I will give it one more try.
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Good luck with the resubmit 
. If you don’t mind sharing a screenshot, I would love to see what the Niantic note from the appeal reviewer said so that I can help others trying to submit a beach.
Oh you said accepted before …..good luck with round 2
Yeah, made a mistake there
This is the official response:
"Thanks for the appeal, Explorer! The nomination in question is connected to the Beach at the Curacao Ocean Resort does not meet the eligibility criteria to be a Wayspot. If the location is a popular tourist attraction or a point of interest for the community or visitors, we suggest resubmitting the nomination with a place marker sign that represents the beach as a public attraction site. This would significantly improve the chances of your nomination being eligible. For further guidance, we encourage you to review the eligibility criteria here for such nominations
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Surprise, surprise, and without doing anything else, the nomination just got accepted. Very strange, but nice!
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So my conclusion is. The AI does not like water and beaches. However the appeal process works!
Next time, I will probably take a picture of a sign, even though I prefer a nicer picture.
This sunday I will visit one of the national parks here at the island. There is a beautiful spot where the waves hit a cave. I was going to take a picture of the cave, now I will settle for the lookout tower (This is the observation point)
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