In the wake of the recent TripAdvisor rating scandal, two travel industry insiders are claiming reviews about their businesses have been faked, either by competitors or by themselves.
John Walker, who runs the Hotel Los Castaños — described as an intimate hotel of quality in Cartajima, a small village near Ronda, Spain, “with rooms ranging from stylishly economic to purely luxurious” — says rivals planted a bad review of his property.
They managed to get a number of reviews removed from our listing and posted a totally fraudulent review which has ruined our ratings. TripAdvisor seems to be refusing to remove it, despite what you quote April Robb as saying, that suspect reviews are immediately taken down. This shows that their site is open to abuse from not just owners but also of general users and competitors, which makes life more difficult in these very difficult times.
Walker is referring to the following review, posted by a one-time contributor named Dwronda.
Reality check. The Los Castanos Hotel is 18 kilometers, 25+ minutes* from Ronda. Calling ‘Cartajima’ ‘Ronda’ is like calling the city of ‘Oakland,’ ‘San Francisco’. Last year, it took my family about about 30 minutes up and down some narrow mountain roads to travel from Ronda to Cartajima. There are some fine local artisans in Cartajima who weave cloth and rugs, so Cartajima is definitely worth a visit. But there are few restaurants or hikes around Cartajima. Los Castanos is a comfortable rural hotel, a two-star property by most standards. Simple rooms, no pool, lacks a full-service restaurant.
Walker responded to the complaint on TripAdvisor:
Los Castanos is not in central Ronda as one can see from the Tripadvisor map, but Ronda is our nearest town. We are located in a tiny village about 14 minutes drive down a major highway and 6 minutes along a fairly narrow well-paved mountain road. Our guests come to us because they want to be in the Ronda area but not in the town.
Unfortunately, Cartajima does not boast any artisans or weavers.
We have a small, spectacularly located pool on our rooftop terrace (see photo at the top of this page) and we have a restaurant for our guests only (see other reviews).
A recent Daily Telegraph reporter described the hiking in this quiet valley as ‘the best I have ever done’, and we have a contract with a walking company for week-long walking holidays.
Regarding the amenities in the hotel, I would advise readers to look at the other reviews.
Did this review “ruin” the Los Castanos’ rating? Hardly. A vast majority of its guests rated it as “excellent.”
All of which brings me to the next complaint from William, a former restaurateur who told me about how he leveraged TripAdvisor to increase his business.
I just wanted to give you my input on my experience as a business owner who artificially “upped” my own rating.
I live in Costa Rica and used to own a very popular restaurant in a resort town on the pacific coast. My restaurant was a huge success, and for the most part my advertising was word of mouth. Any time you get a group of gringos together, they WILL compare notes on the must do’s and must don’ts. We quickly became a must-do.
I began tracking feedback about my restaurant on TripAdvisors “rants and raves” page. It very quickly occurred to me that I could right in glowing reviews about my own restaurant and up my ratings numbers. Luckily, that wasn’t necessary at first. We had some great reviews from actual real life clients and we maintained a 4 to 4.5 rating.
After a period of time, I began to see my rating slide a bit after some not so positive postings by supposedly “real” customers. The complaints that were written about seemed somewhat contrived, and as I was owner and general manager I would have become aware very quickly about these types of complaints.
Were they posted by my competition?
Perhaps, but I didn’t let it concern me too much. I simply got on TripAdvisor and bombarded them with glowing reviews about my own restaurant! Within days, I was rated a perfect 5!
During that same time my competitors ratings mysteriously declined, and the negative reviews for their restaurants came from all over the US — including Debby from Dallas! No joke.
I still use TripAdvisor for my travels around the globe, but I always throw out the high and the low score and rely on what lies in the middle. Usually the truth.
These claims are disturbing, to say the least. But in talking with TripAdvisor, which admits it is unable to catch every fraudulent review, it seems this may be exposed to an active community of travel insiders who successfully doctor some of the site’s reviews.
There has to be a better way to get authentic reviews about hotels and restaurants.
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The gentleman from Costa Rica had it right. To get a fairly approximate score, discard the high and low outliers when you look at a review. Actually, I usually ignore the number ratings altogether as they are too subjective. Based on expectations, what might be a 3 to me is a 1 to someone else and a 5 to another person (also often based on price actually paid)
Yes, management can affect the numbers, particularly at smaller, less-reviewed establishments where reviews are less frequent. But generally speaking I’ve almost always been able to spot the questionable reviews.
Key phrase to avoid..
“Best ever!”
Look for reviews with details, such as names, dates, specific activities. See how many reviews the poster has. And if ANYTHING is #1 on a list after just opening, take everything with a grain of salt.
Full disclosure, I am a Destination Expert on TA. We work very closely with the TA staff to try to identify false entries, but even knowing the area like we do we cannot catch them all. TA is a great source for reviews but should not be your only source.
And if you are not sure, post in the forums for that area, the DEs will be happy to help.
Booking.com has what seems to be a good system. Its hotel reviews are limited to customers who have booked through the site. They are contacted by e-mail after the stay and invited to rate and review. It doesn’t guarantee that customers have good judgment, but at least they were genuinely customers.
Advice to ignore the extreme reviews, on either side of the spectrum, is very good. The don’t have to be fake to be misleading. People get angy for silly reasons and take it out online, or get ecstatic for equally silly reasons.
I can’t imagine a foolproof way to get honest and aithentic reviews in an essentially anonymous online venue. TA, and other similar sites, might even require posters to povide proof that they actually stayed or ate at the facility, Even that, though, wouldn’t prevent bogus reviews.
Nor can I imagine foolproofe way for these sites to detect bogus reviews. Perhaps if there was a way for users to grade or comment on the validity of reviews after they had visited the subject of the review.
I suppose there is no truly foolproof system to getting good ratings. I know of someone who had asked for extra towels in a room and when housekeeping didn’t get the request handled quickly enough, just flew off the handle. When he returned home, he had posted a negative review about how the hotel “ignored his requests.”
Now, keep in mind, the guy is one of those self-important jerks we all come across from time to time, but you don’t always know what motivates a person to leave a review. I always try too write objectively, because, really, if a pillow is too soft for me, does that really mean anything to anyone else? :) Hopefully, though, the true review will outnumber the planted reviews or “vindictive reviews” at a given site.
Hallo everybody,
I’am reading this good article from Italy where this scandal it’s growing day by day.
There are two parties damaged by Tripadvisor, as it’s working:
1) the travellers who belive that they are reading a trustable information source, and
2) the touristic accommodations reviewed with fake defamatory reviews.
Tripadvisor’s slogan “Get the Trhuth. Then go” it’s compleately FAKE.
Tripadvisor cannot certify and guarantee the content of what it’s published and this because they are keep on letting the writer be anonimous and at the same time they do not certify that the writer it’s a real traveller who have confirmed a paid a real booking and so that he or she has spent a real holiday in the accomodation reviewed: anybody can write a review…even without having seen on a postacard the accomodation reviewed!
They claimed and keep on claiming to the world, to have a Super Sophisticated Algoritm which it’s capable of detecting fake reviews…but why it’s not working?
The biggest point of weakness it’s Tripadvisor’policy to keep the writer-traveller anonimous.
This choice offers a “rules’ land free” where anybody can say everything without being identified, to certify the authenticity and the responsability of what it’s claimed.
But let’s go to straight to the interpretation’ key of this big “show”.
Who is going to gain money from this?…the owner of Tripadvisor….who is?…guess…yes! it’s Expedia!
Tripadvisor, draws milions of travellers promising true and genuine information ( which it’s impossible !) and then, in the same page where you can read the reviews, it “gives as a gift” the chance to know availability of the accomodation reviewed and ALL competitors sorted by distance in meters!
The availability offered it’s “kindly” shown by Expedia and all the booking engines owned, controlled or partnered with Expedia.
Obviously, Tripadvisor list ALL accomodations, not only the ones who are bookable through Expedia: this because they are exploiting good names and fame of all accommodations with a good presence on searching engines, with the”excuse” to be the “voice of thruth”, without being, and at the same time sales the accomodations througt Expedia & co’ booking engines.
This is unfair competition for all accommodations which do not sale their rooms through Expedia & co. ….even because Expedia could claim as a fee on the overall value of confirmed booking more then 30%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A black dangerous shadow it’s growing from Tripadvisor, because “managing” this public image of the accomodations and tourism related businesses, actually they could boost some of them and penalize some other, always in the view to squize the top possible income from this business.
We hope that this doubt will be soon erased by Expedia and Tripadvisor so to let the free market keep on being free and fair.
We have invited hundred times Tripadvisor to reply to those lawful questions, but nobody has never replied:
1) How can you certify that the review’s writer has stayed in the accommodation reviewed?
2) How can you guarantee that the writer it’s not a fake one, an unfair competitor, or a joker?
3) How can you ensure that what it’s written in the review, from the “potential” guest’s accomodation, it’s what really happened?
4) How can you guarantee the thruth, the genuineness, originality and source of the review?
5) In what consit the checks and controls you claimd to do on the reviews? How many checks have been made on all the reviews you claimd to have published?
6) In Italy we have a law which protect privacy of individuals and companies: why you list identifying details ( e.g: names, address, pictures, details od personnels ) of properties whitout asking a permission to the owner/manager/header?
7) Why on http://www.tripadvisor.it you don’t show your legal address, the addresses of your offices, telephone numbers and responsible manager of the sensitive data?
8 ) In order to protect our good name from public defamatory fake reviews, we ask to know writer details : why you don’t supply this information ?
9) How many of the published reviews on Tripadvisor are true and linked to a real booking confirmed and paid by a real identifiable user?
10) Why you keep on using the slogn “Get the Truth then go” which dresses Tripadvisor’s contents as truthful, when you are NOT able to certify the source and truthfulness of what it’s stated in the reviews?
We kindly invite who is in charge for Expedia and Tripadvisor, to reply to those questions to clarify this situation as soon as possible.
Kind regards
Alla Dolce Vita
we know for a fact that tripadvisor does not verify the accuracy for their reviews, you can read about our story here: http://www.elliott.org/blog/we-are-not-crooks/ ; and they refuse to remove our hotel from their site so they can rack up the ad dollars! ; this is why we launched our own ad free hotel review site.
Regards,
Nawar