How do I boost my TripAdvisor rating?
That’s the most common question I get from hotel executives. And even though I try to persuade them it’s the wrong question — that there’s no proven link between a good review and bookings — they insist that their TripAdvisor reviews are the be-all and end-all.
Now, two of TripAdvisor’s most vocal critics, Beat of Hawaii with an assist from guidebook legend Arthur Frommer, have delivered a devastating blow to the Expedia-owned site.
The sites point to new warning language that accompanies close to 100 TripAdvisor hotel reviews:
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.
Frommer suggests TripAdvisor is basically done.
Why wouldn’t a hotel submit a flurry of positive comments penned by employees or friends? If you were a hotel owner, wouldn’t you take steps to make sure that TripAdvisor contained numerous favorable write-ups of your property? Who would fail to do this? And because of such inescapable logic, doesn’t TripAdvisor contain within itself the germs of its own undoing?
Shortly after the story hit the blogosphere and the twittersphere, TripAdvisor went on the counterattack. April Robb, who staffs TripAdvisor’s Twitter account, posted a reply on Beat of Hawaii.
TripAdvisor has zero tolerance for fraud, and we have many systems in place to address it. Our red badges are just one component and they are not, in fact, new; they’ve been standard procedure for a while now. Properties that are suspect based on specific criteria have a red badge posted next to their listing to alert travelers to our concerns. Whether or not the property advertises on TripAdvisor is irrelevant; content integrity is our utmost concern.
After I tweeted about the TripAdvisor scandal, Robb pointed me to the comment. I asked her if, now that Frommer had added his opinion, she had anything else to say. She did.
We believe our nearly 25 million reviews and opinions are authentic, honest and unbiased, from real travelers, which is why we enjoy tremendous user loyalty. Also, the sheer volume of reviews we have for an individual property allows travelers to base their decisions on the opinions of many.
The integrity of TripAdvisor reviews is protected by three primary methods:
1. Every review is screened prior to posting and a team of quality assurance specialists investigate suspicious reviews
2. Proprietary automated tools help identify attempts to subvert the system
3. Our large and passionate community of more than 25 million monthly visitors help screen our content and report suspicious activity
When a review is suspected to be fraudulent, it is immediately taken down and we have measures to penalize businesses for attempts to game the system. Penalties are handled on a case by case basis.
So should you trust TripAdvisor?
Having covered the site since the very start, I think I’m uniquely qualified to answer that question. And my answer is: maybe.
Hotels and restaurants are gaming the ratings system, without a doubt. What’s significant about the recent TripAdvisor warnings is that they appear to shift their fraud-detection efforts from an unrealistic, proactive approach to a more reasonable, reactive approach. Which is to say, they do their best to catch bogus reviews as they’re posted, but in the end, they can’t stop them all. To TripAdvisor, this may seem like a subtle change, but to the likes of Beat of Hawaii, it’s a huge concession.
It’s an admission that the reviews are imperfect. TripAdvisor features more than just “real advice from real travelers” — it also has fake reviews from real hotels. And fake reviews from their competitors. And fake reviews from restaurants and their competitors.
In other words, it’s messy.
Does this mean TripAdvisor is useless? Hardly.
I use TripAdvisor when I travel, but I do so with the knowledge that the travel industry is successfully manipulating the site. I ignore the best and worst reviews (those are typically the fake ones) and whenever I read phrases like “best hotel ever” or “incomparable service” I roll my eyes and wonder about that fabled algorithm that’s supposed to catch counterfeit reviews.
TripAdvisor, for its part, could stand to tone down some of its rhetoric. Maybe losing the “real advice from real travelers” line would be a good start.
Certainly, its slogan, “Get the truth. Then Go.” needs to be revised. Or dropped.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I only ever used it for the candid photos. I still kinda trust that those are representative of the property, but even those can be outdated.
I will use it after I have narrowed down the list of hotels in a particular destination. I typically only read reviews from people with multiple reviews. But the real reviews do contain information that is helpful for your stay like which floors could be best or local eateries for breakfast. I think you can count on the individual reviews, since you should be able to i.d for yourself the hokey ones but they skew the ratings, so don’t go by the ratings.
There’s nothing unique about the problems facing TripAdvisor. Every online forum has the same problem. If you open your site to the public, then, well, you have opened your site to the public.
Common sense is the best approach to using all review sites. Ignore the extremes on either side of the curve. Ignore the guy who goes ballistic because the bottle of wine he ordered from room service was 5 minutes late. Check other reviews, both from users and by professional reviewers. If everyone seems to agree about a place, that tells you one thing. If TripAdvisor is full of glowing reviews but everyone else pans the place, think twice.
With no disrespect to Mr. Frommer, he has a vested business interest in marginalizing the value of TripAdvisor. Why? Because user review sites like TripAdvisor cut into the sales of his guide books.
I, too, have been covering TripAdvisor since the start. There is fraud and abuse — has been since day one. That’s unacceptable. It’s good to see that TripAdvisor is taking steps to address this. It’s been too long.
As you say, it’s best to view the comments in aggregate. Take advantage of the tools available to filter them to fit your lifestyle or the type of trip you’re taking, like a business trip, family trip, etc. And don’t begin and end on TripAdvisor. Sites like Dopplr.com, Kayak, and IgoUgo may have reviews for your hotel. Online travel agency sites like Travelocity, priceline.com, etc., also have reviews, and they only allow people who’ve booked a hotel through those sites to post, adding to the accuracy/relevancy of those comments.
I have used Tripadvisor for years. Like the first comment stated, I use it mainly to see travelers’ photos. And it isn’t hard to figure out which are the legitimate reviews from travleres who share my goals and tastes. In those reviews, I have found lots of helpful tips and suggestions. I will continue to use TA and my common sense to hlep get the most I can out of traveling. I also post reviews which I hope help other travelers.
As a frequent user of – and occasional contributor to – TripAdvisor’s reviews, I agree with Gus: There are no easy, foolproof answers, and everyone has their built-in biases – whether they set out to scam the system or not. You’d be foolish to rely on any single source for assessments of a hotel. Use the TripAdvisor reviews (and, sometimes even more helpfully, the photos) to get a sense of the place; check other review sites (inc. Fodor and Frommer); and – ultimately – accept that one of the rules of travel is that not everything will always be perfect. Hey, that’s life.
It’s quite unfortunate that there isn’t a foolproof way to filter out the real independant reviews from the ringers, but as it has already been mentioned it’s a public site and no proof of ever having stayed in a property or eaten in a restaurant is required before submitting a review. Many reviews are by 1 post wonders, who suddenly seem to have found the site & the time to submit a review, and yet they never post anything again. To me most of those reviews hold no value what so ever. I take reviews subjectively, and if a member has a fair number of posts to the site it indicates that they have likely used the forums for research, and therefore will have a more factual idea of what to expect.
Of the few honest reviews that are way over the top, or that tear a place to bits I usually consider it a lack of homework in the first place or attribute it to a relatively inexperienced traveler staying at their first really good property choice. The forums are the place to do your homework by asking questions, especially after having read the reviews.
I’m shocked, shocked! to discover that some properties in the travel industry use shills to boost ratings!
I hope no one takes user-reviewer ratings websites with anything but a large grain of salt.
I post on the Cozumel, MX TA forum frequently. I can assure you the frequent posters and readers of this locale know exactly when a “fraudulent” post is made on the forum.
There are tell tale signs and the Designated Experts and other frequent posters will quickly ask TA to shut down a forum topic to further discussion if they believe it to be blatantly wrong, misleading or a violation of TA rules. The forums are self-policing to a certain extent and TA acts quickly to keep the information accurate.
As a frequent visitor to Cozumel (4-5 times a year), I find the TA forum to be one of the best places to glean new information on new places that have opened and things to do on the island.
Are there fake reviews? Most certainly, but given the large number of reviews, one can certainly sort through the chaff to see what the real story is. One can also solicit ideas and thoughts on the forum. The people that are frequent readers of the forum know who the business owners are. Most of these owners are careful to make disclosures as to their interests.
Do I agree with all the reviews? Not really, but to each his own as to what is good and what is bad. My tastes may not correspond with theirs.
I own a 12 room hotel business on the beach in Cancun and I work very VERY hard to get my guests to write comments when they arrive home. Say we have 12 guests one week, it is easy to get atleast 2 or three to write comments.
These guests turn into repeat guests and so they want to please me as much as I want to please them, and see my big smile when they come back to rent from us in a year. Sometimes I have to tell them 3 or 4 times how much I would really appreciate a review.
Now when I think of review sites all over the world, I think that only COMPLAINERS go to write to them…even if you look at the Hilton or the Marriott, it is full of complainers…so I thought, I am going to ask my happy guests to write reviews. And they did , And now people seek us out on tripadvisor and they too write good reviews. The world is not all negative and when there are 50 good reviews why do you presume it cannot be true? We work very very hard to keep our guests happy…and reward ourselves with grand vacations 3 x a year.
One time a terrible jealous neighbor wrote a horrible FAKE review of us on tripadvisor and attached photos after a hurricane of our resort. It was devastating to me! It terrifies me to this day to google my name for fear of a false review. Reviews are too very important. And if your family is going to write a fake review for you, I would question their scruples…they are dishonest. and probably steal from hotels too.
REMEMBER CRUISECRITICGATE (Cruise Critic is owned by TripAdvisor):
From Jaunted (Conde Nast):
http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/3/16/12635/4598/travel/Royal+Caribbean+Cruises+Has+Web+2.0+Viral+Infection
Royal Caribbean Cruises Has Web 2.0 Viral Infection
No surprise here: Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has a viral infection. For once, however, it’s not the Norovirus but that new-fangled byproduct of Web 2.0, the viral marketing infiltration. According to Consumerist, a group of fifty “Royal Champions” was outed by their own creator, the Customer Insight Group, as being a successful project whereby frequent positive cruise commenting on sites such as CruiseCritic was rewarded with free cruises and other perks.
So what’s the big deal? Well, it seems that the “Royal Champions” weren’t always up front about their status as compensated reviewers, effectively misleading readers of CruiseCritic forums with their positive comments. Add to this the fact that CruiseCritic admins assisted Royal Caribbean in choosing the fifty, with one of the stipulations being quantity of posts, “with many having over 10,000 message board posts on various Royal Caribbean topics.” From here, the hole just gets deeper.
Now that many RC fans feel slighted at not having made the ranks and most everyone else is disgusted at the covert trade of cruising for happy juicing, the trustworthiness of such forums is under fire.
Due to CruiseCritic’s ownership by TripAdvisor, which is in turn under the Expedia blanket of travel sites, a viral marketing stunt gone awry could possibly continue to negatively ripple. Does news like this affect your ability to trust good reviews on travel sites, or do you already consider yourself an excellent shill-spotter enough to weed out the solicited from the unsolicited? While this whole ordeal is mired in serious muckety-muck, let’s hope it serves as a lesson for future viral marketers and as an argument for transparency.
One note … although I wrote to tripadvisor many times and proclaimed that this review was obviously fake…it was never removed. And l will never recover from my fear of google’ing my name, sadly.
I have used TripAdvisor for years and it is one of my favorite travel research sites. I actually don’t use the reviews that much however since I find that reviewer’s expectations or needs may be much different than my own. The TA forums are where you can really get local info and fill in the blanks.
I do find it odd that the thought that there might be some shill reviews somehow makes the site worthless. Why is a shill review any worse than the review by the hothead who didn’t like his waiter and now has a personal vendetta against a place? You really need to read several reviews to get a feel for a place and then use the forums to confirm it. I don’t expect an iron-clad guarantee from TA that I will love a place simply becuase it is rated in the top 10.
I have used the phrase “best hotel” or “best service ever” in my reviews and I meant them. Sure they are superlatives, but it is just emphasizing a point that we really enjoyed these things. And I would say most people use these words to describe great experiences more often than not. So ignoring those would kind of be ridiculous. Considering, most people who take the time to write reviews probably either were driven to do so because they really hated it or really loved it and want to vent for revenge or rave as gratitude, making it all the more likely you will hear many superlatives…. Seems useless to skip those. They get the point across.