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Tripadvisor Warning Visitors About Fake Reviews

Hostel Trends and News

Josh started this discussion 15 years 6 months ago

TripAdvisor warns of hotels posting fake reviews:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/hotsites/2009-07-15-trip-advisor_N.htm

The influential travel website TripAdvisor has been quietly posting disclaimers to warn customers of hotels writing fake reviews to improve their popularity rankings or hurt competitors.

The red disclaimers near the names of hotels show that TripAdvisor has a problem with fake reviews, travel bloggers and industry experts say. One blogger, Jeff Tucker, warned that without changes to restore credibility to the reviews the site is "going to come crumbling down behind them."

...last month travel websites and blogs began to log and discuss the red warnings, which read: "TripAdvisor has reasonable cause to believe that either this property or individuals associated with the property may have attempted to manipulate our popularity index by interfering with the unbiased nature of our reviews. Please take this into consideration when researching your travel plans."

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Scotch Argus

15 years

At the moment I don't think tripadvisor if used by a lot of hostel users (In Europe at least - don't know about the USA) but it may become more popular in the future. Unless they improve their security they're always going to be open to this. As they have no way of knowing if someone has stayed then there can always be fraudulent revies, both negative and positive. I must admit the main problem I have with tripadvisor reviews is that some of them are obviously written by VERY fussy people, and don't give an indication of what I would think of the place.

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Josh Hostels

15 years

I think people use Tripadvisor for hostels when they find it in search engines. A lot of the hotel sites are now optimizing themselves to come up in searches for hostels. (Example from igougo.com)

If you search Google for a hostel by name anywhere in the world, Tripadvisor is likely to come up on the first page.

Random example 1 (#3 in Google, 39 reviews)
Random example 2 (#4 and #5 in Google, 33 reviews)

I don't know how many people are browsing hostel reviews on Tripadvisor before booking, but it mght be significant.

Does anyone have booking numbers from Tripadvisor? (They are affiliates of Hostelworld, Hostelbookers, and Hostelsclub.)

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AndrewC

15 years

Scotch Argus you've hit the nail on the head.

I've had a bad experience where a guest that booked though hostelbookers was unhappy with their room. There was some disagreement over the scenario but, we agreed to refund their money and move on. Once we refunded her money she wrote a completely untrue review on hostelbookers (saying we didn't refund etc). We successfully proved to hostelbookers the review was untrue, and they took it down. A fair result.

This guest decided to post an even more untrue review on Tripadvisor. I emailed Tripadvisor, explaining the situation, and offering to provide supporting information, proving that I had rectified the situation to hostelbookers satisfaction, and the persons statements regarding being ripped off were untrue.

Tripadvisors response was that they couldn't accept any supporting evidence of my claim because they valued the independence of the reviews!

So basically, anyone can write whatever they want about your property. Even if you can prove it's untrue they'll let it stand.

I wont stoop to writing false reviews, but considering Tripadvisor reviews appear in you're google business listing I can see why people do.

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BenjaminYap

12 years

Absolutely Agree and Support the above points especially "the main problem I have with tripadvisor reviews is that some of them are obviously written by VERY fussy people, and don't give an indication of what I would think of the place." and "anyone can write whatever they want about your property. Even if you can prove it's untrue they'll let it stand."

Have travelled to many destinations without looking at TripAdvisor websites and still enjoy my trips by myself, with family and friends. If TripAdvisor is hosted on a web server in New Zealand most of its user generated content would have to be removed by the site owner or by the Registrar - no defamatory content and to follow relevant laws like the Fair Trading Act and others.

Some people are never happy with their room and try to threaten business operators by posting negative, untrue and defamatory comments on the Internet if they do not get for example, a refund, discount or free cancellation.

I also believe that TripAdvisor is a biased system.

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

This is a creative approach to demonstrate the problem with unconfirmed content from users on TripAdvisor. Just create a fake business!

TripAdvisor reviewers rave over non-existent restaurant

The English hoax restaurant lived only in cyberspace. A businessman made the whole thing up, according to the Huffington Post in the US, as a reaction to a friend’s hotel receiving a swag of negative criticism, which he suspected was from a rival hotel owner.

So he created Oscar’s – and the restaurant took off. It was rated “excellent” by seven of eight total reviews on TripAdvisor and ended up ranked 29 of 63 restaurants in England’s Brixham area – purportedly acquiring Michelin-star status. The restaurant was said to be located at New Quay Lane, Brixham TQ5 8AJ. But gourmets heading there found just a deserted alley filled with garbage bins.

The restaurant was reported to TripAdvisor as a hoax by its members, and the listing was subsequently removed.

“With over 70 pieces of content coming in every minute covering more than 2.7 million properties around the world, occasionally a review or business that does not meet TripAdvisor’s guidelines may slip through the cracks,” TripAdvisor admitted in a media release about the gaffe.

The admission is embarrassing for a company which cops a lot of flak from hoteliers about allegedly dubious hotel reviews.

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Josh Hostels

11 years

Funny... there's still a cached version of the page here. :)

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