Is TripAdvisor.com one big joke?
Filed under: Travel, Consumer Complaints
TripAdvisor, the popular hotel review site, which in theory is a gold mine for shared information, boasts some 25 million views a month, and although it isn't responsible for writing positive reviews to promote any one property, its messy, user-generated system is increasingly under fire for fomenting propaganda.The objections are piling on so quickly that the Web site has placed disclaimers on at least 92 hotel pages (click here to see one). "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."
To the site's watchdogs, which include Arthur Frommer and BeatofHawaii.com, it was like an admission of guilt. TripAdvisor, they allege, has fallen victim to desperately self-promoting hotels that have successfully learned to pad the reviews, trashing the purpose of the whole site.
BeatofHawaii.com took the accusations further by reporting that Visit Scotland, the official tourism bureau of Scotland, even uses tax money to teach hoteliers how to use TripAdvisor to their advantage, i.e., how to slip their propaganda past the censors.If that's not a conflict enough for you, it gets thornier. Visit Scotland added TripAdvisor reviews to its official Web site because it would result in "increased bookings for participating accommodation." So, in essence, first the tax-supported body taught hotel owners to use the system and then it posted the results on a government Web site in order to stimulate income. (A Visit Scotland rep told me that although reviews are linked through its official website, it only teaches hotel staff how to respond to criticism, not how to game the system.)
To hear TripAdvisor's founder Steve Kaufer tell it, abuse like that is a minor concern. He told travel journalist Christopher Elliott that the site catches the "vast majority" of manipulated reviews. Kaufer also furnished the following three-point defense:
"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."
Sounds good, but it's full of holes. First, how exactly will the review screeners know when a review is suspicious? One of the primary problems with TripAdvisor is that users regularly accuse other uses of stuffing the ballot box with either raves or pans. But if you genuinely love a hotel and write a rave, what is there to distinguish your review from one written by someone who was manipulated to do so?
There are also reports of hotels pressuring guests to post reviews on TripAdvisor after their stays. Strictly speaking, this is perfectly legal and probably undetectable by TripAdvisor.
Budget Travel.com's Sean O'Neill mused, "I've long wondered [why] TripAdvisor didn't duplicate Amazon's 'Real Name' feature, which offers third-party verification that a reviewer is the person he or she claims to be." That would be a better solution than what TripAdvisor is putting forward, which is too vulnerable to human error. Or it could do what Priceline.com does, and only allow reviews from people it knows have actually stayed at the property in question.
Second, "proprietary automated tools." What's that? Until we know what they are, this isn't much of a defense. Right now, it sounds like a spam blocker, and TripAdvisor's tattered reputation doesn't involve automated spam. It involves, like I said, a human-directed stuffing of the ballot box.
Third, it claims that users flag suspicious activity. That, too, can be manipulated. One hotel manager could wage war against another this way. A hotel manager could also claim her own negative review is offensive just to get it off the books for a little while. Also, an honest (but poorly written) review could also be mistakenly removed this way.
The system doesn't work because of human manipulation, but TripAdvisor wants to remedy that with more human manipulation.
But when it comes to shared information systems, the "flag-and-investigate" method of patrolling doesn't work on websites of volume, partly because of staffing concerns and partly because it can lead to some messy manipulations. That's what probably happened when Amazon.com recently put countless gay and lesbian titles in an adults-only ghetto, invisible to searches, likely because some anonymous people didn't think the subject matter lined up with their own personal beliefs.
If I were to advise TripAdvisor, I would tell it to find a more fail-safe way to clean up its act. After all, it's owned by Expedia, which stands to make a buck if you book a room at one of the well-reviewed hotels on its site. So far, public grumbling about TripAdvisor has not extended to judgment about the financial connection between positive reviews and income for the site's parent.
TripAdvisor isn't the only site to grapple with manipulation by corporations orchestrating stealth operations. A representative for Belkin electronics was nabbed for paying people to post five-star reviews on Amazon. Royal Caribbean was caught wining and dining customers who then went forth and flooded cruise review sites with praise for the line. Yelp has been outed for pressuring establishments to pay up in exchange for burying bad reviews.
Last summer, I gave my advice about how to interpret user-review sites such as TripAdvisor, and the Web site's defense has done nothing to change my prescription, so here it is again. My advice boils down to learning how to read between the lines:
- Read as many reviews for a given place as you can and ignore the most glowing and most angry postings, which could be either from the owners or their rivals.
- If an entry reads like it was written by a PR person (vaguely ecstatic, wording that sounds like a brochure, details no normal guest would notice), it just might have been. Sometimes, fake reviews will toss a few minor complaints in to lend credence. Likewise, the more professional a photo looks, the less trustworthy it becomes.
- Post regular reviews of your own on the sites you like. The more people post, the more the sites' phony write-ups will be diluted, and the more useful the databases become.
- For some destinations with legions of fans, like Walt Disney World, read carefully to determine whether the reviewer is truly appraising or unduly starry-eyed.
- If a hotel's management consistently responds to negative reviews, take it as a promising sign that testifies to their attention to service.
- Always consider the source and account for cultural differences. For example, American tourists frequently complain bitterly about the small hotel rooms in Europe. That doesn't mean the hotel's bad.
- Don't reach conclusions -- either positive or negative -- about places with only a few reviews.
- If possible, temper your findings with write-ups from a newspaper or guide book, but remember that most publications only publish recommendations and they won't even bother printing a hotel listing if the review would be awful.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-24-2009 @ 3:51AM
Sian said...
Interesting article... A great website that I use to check the authenticity of tripadvisor reviews is trivago. trivago brings together over 5 million reviews from trivago, expedia, hotelscombined, tripadvisor, booking.com...etc. I find that this way it is easier to see the overall view of a hotel as if a hotel is rated 100% on tripadvisor and 50% on the other review sites you can tell something is up. Take a look, it's a great way to compare all the reviews at once...http://www.trivago.com
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6-24-2009 @ 4:34AM
James Lakie said...
"BeatofHawaii.com took the accusations further by reporting that Visit Scotland, the official tourism bureau of Scotland, even uses tax money to teach hoteliers how to use TripAdvisor to their advantage."
This information is completely inaccurate and false. VisitScotland does not use tax money, or any other money, to do any such thing. Around 500 Scottish tourism businesses are currently partaking in an independent pilot with TripAdvisor to see what impact user generated reviews have. To say VisitScotland is teaching businesses how to use TripAdvisor favourably is very wide of the mark.
It should be noted we are currently following this up with Beatofhawaii.com to ascertain where evidence of such an allegation came from.
James Lakie
VisitScotland
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6-24-2009 @ 10:44AM
Ed said...
Disclaimer: I work for TripAdvisor and I am speaking for myself, not the company in this reply.
I'm surprised this issue has any legs at all. Is anyone really "shocked, shocked" to discover that people in the travel industry (or any consumer-facing industry) try to boost their online image by submitting fake reviews of their products? Of course they do - and we catch a lot of them.
I see the fraud team at work every day, I know the stats on the numbers of reviews rejected, I know the details of our automated anti-fraud algorithms - how they are constantly tweaked and how effective they are. If we were to release details on how those systems work, we would be giving a road map for bypassing them. That said, I'm not asking anyone to simply "trust us". The point of web 2.0 is that you have to use your head, and trust your common sense.
The web has always been a mix of reliable and unreliable information. As you point out in the end of your post, any savvy user has to know how to intelligently assess and interpret what he/she reads online. That applies to TripAdvisor, eBay, Amazon, Twitter, blogs like this or any other site that allows people to lpost information.
The sheer numbers of reviews on TripAdvisor make it very difficult to seriously game the system. Sure you can try and get fake positive/nagative reviews by us, but, thanks to our popularity, you will always be competing with real people posting real reviews as well. An obivous discrepency of opinions on a hotel is a glaring red flag for any thinking individual.
Also, does the fact that the highly exagerated claims about fraud on TripAdvisor come from 2 competitors not strike you as significant?
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6-24-2009 @ 8:39PM
Yvonne said...
I love Trip Advisor and use it as ONE resource to research hotels. I usually read reviews on several sites (Yahoo, Expedia, Trip Advisor and Hotels.com) before making a decision.
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6-25-2009 @ 9:26PM
Johnny GoBecki said...
Yup, I think you hit that one spot on bro!
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6-25-2009 @ 10:32PM
Jesse said...
Definitely is a problem. I think the greatest part of trip advisor is the forums for each travel destination. In fact all of the regular visitors and posters to the forums are in tune with the accusations and we inform people to take the reviews with a grain of salt.
Personally I use my better judgement for reviews in combination with the photos and what people have to say on the forum.
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6-26-2009 @ 3:25AM
David said...
I think Ed summed it up pretty well - anyone who takes ANY review site at face value isn't very bright. I think for the by and large Tripadvisor isn't any worse than any other major sites and certainly better than most.
I still go to them first b/c 1. the volume of reviews - pretty much any hotel I'm looking at will be reviewed and major hotels can have hundreds of reviews 2. the reviews are verbose (instead of the one liners on most sites) 3. has *user taken* photos which I find far more valuable than the stock photos.
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6-26-2009 @ 2:21PM
atravelfan said...
I think the forums on tripadvisor are their finest service.
Where else can you ask people who live in or travel regularly to an area question about what will really fit your needs?
Interestingly, if you look at the number of posts for various users in the forums, it could run into the thousands for a single username. Negative reviewers and forum ranters usually have less than ten posts, which is easy to manipulate.
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6-26-2009 @ 3:24PM
Duane said...
I worked for TripAdvisor for a few years (and might well have had a hand in writing some of those "proprietary automated tools" if Steve is referencing what I think he is). Blaming them for not staying on top of faked reviews is like blaming Gmail for letting spam through, or Microsoft for letting viruses get through. It's the nature of large scale digital systems. It is a constant battle between the white and black hats. Each company dedicates resources to preventing the problem, while the people who stand to benefit from manipulating the system continue to find new ways to do it. It's an endless struggle, and TripAdvisor's not immune to it.
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6-26-2009 @ 6:59PM
salsipuedes said...
Tripadvisor is about "who manipulates the system the best", not about who really deserves the top rating. If your good about manipulating their system, and you can´t get caught, then your #1. If you play by the book, or not too well educated about computers and the internet, then your sentenced to spend your time in the backround even if you provide a really good service. I personally do not trust Tripadvisor anymore, and refuse to give them the power to play god with our industry. I have taken down their #1 (my business) review from our awards wall as i do not believe or trust their ratings.
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6-26-2009 @ 7:15PM
salsipuedes said...
I also wanted to add, Tripadvisor is totally unfair to foreign non english speaking business owners. Here in Mexico, the internet is not the huge tool it is in many other nations. Mexicans do not spend their time online posting reviews, and many other things very popular in the US or Europe. Here popularity is won by local word of mouth, wich is always the best thing any business can strive for. Many local owners who have very good restaurant or hotel operations do not even know about tripadvisor, so is it a surprise that most english speaking businesses are ranked in the top ten and no spanish speaking owners on the bottom? is it a surprise that many good and popular Mexican owned businesses are not even on their list, while other non popular average businesses who are foreign owned are?
Tripadvisor has a huge problem in their hands, they better not try to ignore this.
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6-27-2009 @ 7:51PM
Marie said...
I take the hotel reviews posted to trip advisor.com about as seriously as I find a blog article credible.
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6-27-2009 @ 5:05PM
Darwin said...
What if you got to http://tripntale.com and ask real travelers who has been there?
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7-02-2009 @ 7:20AM
Gordon Gecko said...
Well as mentioned in the text there can be a dual agenda when it comes to tripadvisor as it is as mentioned owned by Expedia.. so of course there would be a dual interest!
That's why i prefer Zoover (http://www.zoover.com) as it is 100% independent! and on top of this cause it exists in so many more languages which makes it easier to relate to people coming from your part of the world as we all are not Americans ;-)
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8-22-2009 @ 3:49PM
Diane said...
The flip side to your accurate article is that consumers are free to say anything at all about a business--true or not--but businesses pretty much have their hands tied in trying to respond. Sometimes the only recourse for a business is to try to "bury" a bad review under as many new good reviews as possible--encouraging manipulation of reviews. TripAdvisor certainly doesn't care. Their only aim is to register as many new customers a day as possible.
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