A Telegraph story details how consumers are using TripAdvisor as a threat to extract freebies in favor of withholding a bad review. Though I tend to think this particular problem is not as widespread as reported, I still see this as yet another reason not to trust TripAdvisor.
Craig Savage, 49, who runs the Double Barrel Steakhouse and Grill in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, claims that about 30 of the 1,000 meals he serves each week will be to malicious customers who threaten bad reviews unless they get a freebie. “What usually happens is that a customer will come to the bar, or say to the waiting staff, ‘I am a senior TripAdvisor reviewer’ and then you know that something will definitely go wrong.
“What we are finding is that these so-called reviewers will complain about the meal or the service and when you ask how to put it right, you can guarantee it will be some sort of freebie.
TripAdvisor used to be my go-to source to find the best hotel and restaurants in any given city. The concept of unbiased user-submitted reviews was great and while my rankings may have sometimes differed, I generally found the reviews spot-on.
But something changed over the last couple years. As Damian reported with his own submissions, hotels became more aggressive in trying to obliterate bad reviews, resorting to unethical measures to clear away any unfavorable comments.
At the same time, I have to suspect hotels are adding many fluff reviews of their own. I realize that a good review does not mean the hotel wrote it—after all, almost all of my hotel reviews are positive and without any coercion from the hotels reviewed. Still, most hotels have service lapses once in awhile and that is what drives many to write reviews in the first place. I suppose that is part of the problem too.
As TripAdvisor has grown in stature, I can only imagine that good and bad reviews make or break a mid-level hotel, especially in a leisure market. Thus, it becomes highly incentivized for a hotel to purge itself of bad reviews.
So we face three problems: blackmail from reviewers, a push to remove bad reviews by hotels and restaurants, and the addition of fluff reviews by those same hotels and restaurants.
Where to Get Honest Reviews
The proper venue to digest hotel reviews that are actually helpful are from sources you can trust. I hope my blog is one of those sources and travel bloggers often offer what I believe are much more comprehensive and honest hotel reviews than what appear on TripAdvisor. Sometimes TripAdvisor will be your only source to find out about the hotel you are considering and it still can be used as a guide, but use TripAdvisor with the attitude that it is well-documented that people extort hotels and restaurants for good and bad reviews and these same hotels and restaurants are often to aggressive to use any means necessary to remove honest constructive criticism from TripAdvisor.
The bottom line is that in most instances you have to experience a property for yourself to truly judge it and should weigh star level, price, and location more heavily when making your booking decisions than anonymous online reviews.
I totally agree with you. That’s why most of the time, I browse Tripadvisor not for the positive reviews, but for the negative ones. I deliberately look for the negative reviews, and see whether (1) they’re reasonable, or they’re just posted by some cr*ppy reviewer who didn’t get his/her freebie; (2) I can live with the ‘negative(s)’ mentioned; and (3) they’re consistently mentioned in the negative reviews.
After all, positive reviews are often faked, and may be difficult to distinguish from the real positive reviews. Fake negative reviews are often so bizarre that you will only laugh at it. And at the end of the day, I read reviews to find out the negatives, not the positives. I can pick up tips on how to get the most out of it, but really, I don’t need to read 10 reviews on how ‘the bed was really comfortable’, ‘the room was really clean’ or ‘the manager was really nice’, because ultimately, these things don’t swing a consumer, the negatives do.
Matt,
As a frequent business traveler, I love your reviews here on Upgrd, and usually agree with your analysis 100%. But I have to disagree with your notes on TripAdvisor here. I am actually a top contributor to TripAdvisor having written around 150 reviews from my many hotel stays and some restaurant experiences. I tend to report both the good, the bad, and the complete middle of the road. I often receive feedback from “management” after some reviews, and I have never once seen a negative review get cancelled, altered, or even asked to to be changed. Never! Plus, I would never walk into a hotel or restaurant and announce that I am going to write a review for TripAdvisor. That is just slimy and rude.
While I have no doubt there are as**oles in the world who would take advantage and use these threats to get free meals/stays, I truly think it is a small overall problem.
They recently hired the much-respected Wendy Perrin, who left Conde Nast Traveler. She is all about honesty and truth in travel. So it will be interesting to see how her philosophy fits in there.
On TripAdvisor, as with all review sites, it pays to ignore the outliers. Regardless of property, there will always be one review that says it was the worst ever and one that says it was the best ever. But if a large number of people say staff are kind or that there’s a weird smell coming from the drains, they’re probably right. At least, that’s how I view TripAdvisor, anyway.
I still find TripAdvisor useful, but you have to be very selective when considering reviews.
For me, the big red flag is a ton of five star reviews by people with only one review. That’s almost always a sign the property is fraudulently pumping its rating. I see this with disturbing frequency. It’s an automatic ding for me.
In my opinion, Trip Advisor has lost it’s luster. Now that they are booking rooms, they are no longer a disinterested third party. Additionally, I know for a fact there are plenty of positive reviews that are auto-banned. Guests who use the resort (or location) Wi-Fi will find their positive posts never show up. Why? Trip Advisor assumes if too many positive posts appear from a set IP, that HAS to be hotel staff “stuffing the ballot box.” However, if a negative review is posted from the same IP it will show up immediately. I’ve complained about that and if you search their FAQ’s you will see that’s the exact case. They want you to “encourage the guest to use an internet source other then the one at the site.” Unfortunately that ends up losing a good part of your positive reviews. People are happy (or mad) they will generally take time out of their trip to post the review. But once they get home, unless they are still upset, chances are a positive review will never be posted. Also the merchant has little to no recourse to combat or disprove BS posts. Tripadvisor is heading down a slippery slope. Sooner or later I believe you will see legal action taken. When the merchant begins to lose money by either having to give away things to combat these “Senior Reviewers” or due to bashing that they have no way to disprove, I see the words “class action” in TA’s future.
TA reviews need to be taken in context. The biggest thing is to look at the history of each reviewer. Those tending to fake reviews (either good or bad) will usually only have a single post. Look for reviews from experience travelers.
The more you use the site, the easier it is to pick out both the ballot stuffing positives and the negative trolls (and even the Sr Advisors looking for freebies).
I doubt a class action will be taken due to a restaurant losing business due to tripadvisor which, like this blog, falls under free speech.
As others have pointed out, the reviews aren’t totally anonymous in that you can see the person’s profile and posting history to gauge the merit of their posts. In the end, nearly all reviews are questionable. I was watching a hotel.com ad and the announcer claimed that the reviews on the site were more reliable because they came from a guest. But by the same token, they are on a website that profits from people booking that hotel on the site. So a paid site has a financial incentive to yank bad reviews (as tripadvisor now does.) Which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing: Sometimes people are upset they didn’t get a freebie and write a silly negative review.
I find tripadvisor useful for such things as tips such as whether metro is nearby, or which side has good rooms, and candid, non-hotel produced photos.
Matthew, I love reading yours and other blogs, but the problem is that you guys are mostly covering main chains, i.g Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, etc.
When we are on vacation, especially in Europe, we usually like to stay in smaller/boutique hotels/ chateaus. So, TripAdvisor comes handy, as well as booking.com in spite of the deficiencies.