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.
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I post reviews of my hotel stays regularly on Trip Advisor, but when I go there to read posts of others when I am looking for a hotel, I always take those reviews with a grain of salt and a lifted eye brow. I then try and go to another review site and compare. I never take what a reviewer says 100%.
I take most reviews with a grain of sand. When searching for a hotel I read reviews on several sites, call me anal-retentive, OK.
When I see overly glowing reviews I play the skeptic. Often I look for 3/4 star places and see such a large scale from good to really bad.
One place I stayed in had a 3 star and should have been a 1 star, and this was after researching several sites with mostly good ratings. Sometimes, mom and pop motels are better than they rate, but it is a crap-shoot.
I am thinking since I am a AAA member, I’ll rely on those ratings a bit more. Are AAA rated places inspected more, I don’t know? Does AAA have higher expectations?
In conclusion, TA has not let me down, especially when searching in Las Vegas, when I have see too many “false” ratings.
I think you’re missing a huge point here. The reviews are posted by Tripadvisor “members”. A member that has multiple reviews from different locations has a lot more credibility than one that has made their first review.
Take that into account when reading reviews, being best or worst. If a member has reviews from all over the world, I have no reason to believe they are biased. I would assume tripadvsior takes this into account as well when flagging reviews
I just did a review on Trip Advisor for a recent stay at the Don Cesar In St Pete. I really did. Me, myself, and the title was “Best hotel in St Pete”. Now I am thinking I’ll have to change my titling……… so Chris doesn’t think my reviews are bogus:)
This makes me laugh. EVERY site that has user-submitted reviews and ratings is prone to this. IMDB, Amazon, electronics sites… if you have a rating system that depends on user comments, you’re going to get this.
It sounds like TripAdvisor is going to further extremes than most sites to try to account for it. Good for them!
As with all other information on the Internet, critical thinking and common sense should always be part of your information gathering process. You can’t blindly trust anything you read. Do your own research, compare information from different sites on the same facility.. in short, just be smarted than the typical Internet user.
I use Trip Advisor regularly and I also post reviews quite often. Recently I went to past a restaurant review on a restaurant that I had previously reviewed. It was clear from my post that this review was based on different visit and some time later than the initial one. My review said plainly that this was a second review. Trip Advisor would not accept this review probably because the gaming that is going on. However now that I understand they are owned by Expedia which is a complete consumer fraud I probably won’t try and post again. It’s a shame because it was a very useful site. Expedia is an expert company when it comes to subterfuge, fraud, and downright dishonesty. So now I know. Goodbye – TripAdvisor.
Have been fortunate not to have any problems with reviews on Trip Advisor (not only do I use it for personal travel, but also for work where I develop tours to Europe for a very large auto association in America). I’ve found what works is using multiple resources OTHER than TripAdvisor and also to do like is described above and eliminate the best and worst. My reasoning for the last isn’t so much to avoid bogus reviews like this column refers to, but to avoid trolls and neophyte travelers, neither of whom are sources I would take seriously.
I usually look up reviews on TripAdvisor and then cross compare them with reviews for the same hotels on Expedia.com or Hotels.com. These two sites do not let you submit a review unless you have recently booked a stay at that particular hotel, and completed your trip, so its a much better guarantee that the reviews you see there are from people who have actually stayed at those hotels.
Great article, Chris, and on something that’s irritated me from the start about TripAdvisor. There’s no qualification needed to post anything about any hotel or restaurant, leaving it wide open for activity that diminishes the integrity of the site.
But it was designed to BE that way. That’s what I don’t get. I also never understood the huge popularity of it given the fact that the site was wide open to fraudulent reviews, and left to the knowing eye of its staff, but what looks “suspicious” to TripAdvisor these days may be authentic reviews!
I took offense at Frommer’s “Why wouldn’t you cheat?’ comments. Plenty of hotels don’t fill these sites with fake reviews. Why wouldn’t they, as Frommer asks? Numerous reasons, with the biggest being that can they can stand on their own merits. And also because every hotel owner isn’t a lying schemer. To insinuate that stacking the decks is a regular practice is lazy and ignorant.
There’s no doubt some of the reviews are biased. Like Chris, when I check out Trip Advisor, I ignore the best and the worst. Also, since I work for a newspaper, I’ve become very proficient at distinguishing between what “real” people write and what PR people write. When you see it all the time, the differences are pretty clear. And I’d think the TA people would also catch it, but that’s another story.
And like other posters, I also check the ratings out on hotels.com or other travel sites. I look for commonalities. For instance, do most of the reviews say the hotel is in a bad neighborhood? It probably is. Are the negative reviews about piddly things like ugly prints on the wall or the pool being closed, even though a city water main broke and the hotel couldn’t do a thing about that? Then it’s probably a decent place. Or, are you seeing the same serious things over and over: like dirty sheets on the bed, no towels in the bathroom, general nastiness, the presence of insects or other varmints? In that case, avoid the hotel like the plague.
Look for the good reviews to focus on the same good things, also, and you have a much better chance of getting a suitable property.
April Robb makes a good point when saying the “sheer volume of reviews we have for an individual property allows travelers to base their decisions on the opinions of many”. But Ms. Robb falls short in serving up appropriate solutions. While user-generated review systems have their flaws, an easy fix that could provide a revenue stream would be to charge folks to be members and additional charges to post a reviews. Sure, the millions of TripAdvisor users would drop to hundreds of thousands, but that volume is still large. Or, TripAdvisor could develop a Review Team (a la Frommer’s), similar to an “Editor’s Rating”. Or, TripAdvisor could appoint Review Ambassadors similar to Yelp.com. Many options are available to improve the user-generated review system.
TripAdvisor and Wikipedia: separated at birth.
As I’ve said before, the problem is not only that hotels and restaurants are posting postive ratings for themselves – and negative ratings for their competitors by the way – it’s also that some have gotten into the practice of offering incentives for travellers and patrons to give positive reviews. So even if a reviewer has posted on multiple places, it still doesn’t mean anything if he’s one of the many that have accepted a freebie or discount in exchange for posting a good review of his most recent hotel experience.
Does it bother anyone else the Frommers is a direct competitor of Tripadvisor. That fact needs to be brought out. Why would you pay $19.99 for a guidebook when the same information might be available on Tripadvisor for free. Beat of Hawaii is also a competitor of TripAdvisor and guess which company is the first advertiser on its website. Frommers!!!!
I think the further story is the self-interest of Frommers and Beat of Hawaii in trashing Tripadvisor.
Why is TripAdvisor being singled out? Isn’t this possible or even going on at other travel review sites? I’m not sure how you can stop it.
One thing could be to see if the reviewer has posted about other locations. That may not be completely fair, but it could be a start. I also look for a large number of reviews. If there are 100 reviews and 80 of them say the place is a dump while 20 give average to glowing reviews, I’m going with the majority on that one.
Carver’s comment is right on. TripAdvisor is a direct threat to the travel guidebook business, which Arthur Frommer and his daughter are still making a lot of money on. So Frommer’s comments hide self-interest, just like fake TripAdvisor reviews. TripAdvisor is very helpful, as long as you take it with a grain of salt, , and know not to believe everything you read, just like Amazon reviews or Wikipedia. If there are 50 reviews for a hotel or experience, and they make a nice bell curve on the points scale, that’s telling you something fairly reliable. There are so many other sources of reviews, too, some of them submittable only by those who have booked a room. Check out maps.google.com.
Sigh. The so-called issues with Tripadvisor are the same as with Wikipedia. Come on folks. This is how web 2.0 works! I believe the criticism is false. User-generated content may not be perfect, but it is a hell of a lot better than industry-created content.
There is no such thing as perfect user-generated content, because users are not perfect. Even if you assume that there are no industry posts, there are always lairs around. People who had a bad experience, and then exaggerate. And the other way around.
Everybody who has ever been evaluated by a group of users or clients knows you should ignore the best and worst 15-20% of the comments anyway.
Look, user-generated content is brilliant, because there are so many more users than trolls. It pisses industries of beyond believe, because they can not control it. And thus, they start criticizing and undermining it. Apparently that is easier than selling a good product.
But, Tripadvisor would not exist if it was not credible. It’s that simple. And as soon as the industry has found a way to destroy Tripadvisor, some other site will pop up and take over. That is the power of web 2.0. Nobody controls the web anymore.
One last tip for Tripadvisor. They can check the IP addresses and map those. They should be suspicious of sudden large amounts of local feedback from the location of a hotel. Travelers usually post from home.
I’ve never used TripAdvisor specifically, but the way I typically use these review sites is to read only the negative reviews, and then I apply the “crackpot test”.
Did the person have unrealistic expectations? Is the person unable to communicate his/her point clearly? Did the person fail to go into details beyond “this place stinks?” Is this reviewer the only one to experience this particular problem?
If any of the above are true, then the reviewer is probably a crackpot, so I ignore. But if an establishment constantly gets the same complaints, and the complaints are recent, then there’s probably really a problem.
I ignore tripadvisor reviews that read like bullit points of the key selling feature of the hotel or that follow the formula I was skeptical, then I tried it and was delighted. When I need authentic information, I check elliott.org. And Chris, thanks for lunch.
I use Tripadvisor every time I travel whether on business or leisure. They have the most comprehensive list of hotels in almost any city/town/village on the planet. I can’t say that I can put my complete trust in them, but I can put some of my trust in them. Tripadvisor reviews have helped me to determine which hotels to avoid and they are usually accurate. For example, I stayed in a hotel in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, Canada last summer and TripAdvisor warned that it was not very good. After staying there one night, I could see why users say so. I also write reviews on Tripadvisor to help other travelers.
Hi Elliott,
I disagree in a big way with your opening statement that there is no proven link between positive comments and revenue.
At least two of my clients have seen significant revenue boosts by encouraging their guests to leave positive reviews on Trip Advisor. There are many legitimate and easy ways for businesses to encourage positive reviews without resorting to black-hat tactics.
http://www.tourismkeys.ca/blog/2008/12/how-to-boost-revenue-20-climb-to-1-on-tripadvisor/
In the comments on this post you’ll note that TripAdvisor indicates the white-hat strategies of hotels encouraging your ideal guests to post reviews is indeed quite legitimate and is to be encouraged, while commenting on yourself is a big no-no.
In this day and age, getting positive reviews is just good business. Likewise, taking care of your guests to ensure negative reviews don’t appear is equally important.
Even Google Maps uses the volume of TripAdvisor and other reviews as an indicator of how relevant any business is to a Local or Google Maps search.
To the traveler, reviews will always be one of the considerations in determining, where to go, where to stay, what to do and where to eat. Those that are great and get reviews will win. Those that are great and don’t encourage reviews…. will not.
I travel Round the World 3 times and I use Tripadvisor every time before booking a hotel. Deception in travel mostly are causing by the over expectations of the travelers themself. Other time because they were lure by the price instead of the specifications of the product. So, do the home work and be realistic.
Take times to read all the reviews and make a decision for yourself. Each traveler have specific needs, so some hotels are great for some but bad for others.
For example : I don’t mind the noise, I like the crowd, I like the actions…. in Amsterdam I prefer the NH Barbizon right in the red light district. But my friend hate it because of the noise.
I must say Reviews on TripAdvisor help me a lot and my friend who has the opposite opinion of my mine said TripAdvisor help him a lot too.
I wrote severals reviews on TripAdvisor and be sure I was very objective and mostly try to complement and confirm other reviews.
So, TripAdvisors Reviewers, go on and keep everybody inform.
I also disagree that there’s no real link between good reviews on TripAdvisor and increased bookings. I am a frequent traveler, and I always factor TripAdvisor reviews into my decisions. I have stayed at numerous hotels primarily BECAUSE of their good reviews, on TripAdvisor and elswhere. In fact, I’m about to stay at a hotel in Stockholm that I never would have even known about, or chosen, if it wasn’t for the reviews on TripAdvisor. So I think that’s a pretty well-proven link!
But I’m also a reasonably intelligent person capable of applying critical thinking to reading online reviews. I’m a member myself, and have posted several reviews. As others have noticed, I pay closest attention to the reviews posted by members who have a history of posting other believable reviews.
I also apply the “crackpot” test mentioned by Bob above. Many negative reviews -especially the ones that seem to stand out in a sea of positive ones – are due to one-off situations that have no bearing on the quality of the place, or are completely out of the control of the venue. For example, one reviewer of a hotel I was looking at in Belize gave them a horrific review because of the supposed proliferation of “sand flies”, and the fact that they were asked to limit showers due to water limitations. Well, on that whole island, water is a limited resource – and sand flies are everywhere! Another reviewer trashed a hotel because her son tripped on the stairs and injured himself. Crackpots.
Just like on Cruise Critic, or even on this forum, you have to read everything with a critical eye, and look for trends. You have to filter out the posts/comments/reviews that seem unbelievable, absurd or planted. It’s a pretty simple concept.
For that reason, I am a strong supporter and believer in the validity and usefulness of TripAdvisor. And count me in among the people who can’t help but notice that those criticizing TripAdvisor happen to be the ones most harmed by their existance.
Travelers like me, however, love them.
@LeAnne and @toddlucier, respectfully, I stand by my statement that that there’s no proven link between a good review and bookings. You’re citing anecdotal evidence. I have yet to see a valid survey of any kind that shows a link. Everyone assumes there is a link. I’m waiting to see the evidence.
Christopher, you are correct that I cited only anecdotal evidence, based on my particular experience. But I respectfully contend that an actual study is unnecessary…that logic dictates that online reviews impact bookings. How many people need to tell you that it affects their booking decisions before it’s no longer anecdotal evidence, but empirical data?
Perhaps you are just waiting for an official study to verify what we all already know. From whom? Is there an industry think-tank planning on one? I hope so – I would love to see the results. In the meantime, I think that for the purposes of this discussion, we can all acknowledge that online reviews DO impact bookings. Obviously the hotels think they do! Perhaps not to the degree that Trip Advisor would like to claim – but I think it would be pretty naive to think they have no impact at all.
I also disagree that the issue of fake reviews renders review sites like Trip Advisor useless. As I mentioned, I think that most frequent travelers can discern valid information from within the posted reviews. Is it a problem? Sure – it would be great if we didn’t HAVE to try to figure out what’s bogus and what’s not.
But this is the internet, and large chunks of what you find on the internet are bogus. Nature of the beast.
I’m not trying to be argumentative – just stating my diverting opinion.
Funny you should be talking about TripAdvisor and the validity of the reviews posted there. I’ve been using TripAdvisor since June 2007 and post regularly. In fact, I was called by a motel yesterday on a recent trip because of my review posted 3 hours previous to the call – so be aware that the businesses can track you – you’re not as anonymous as you’d like to think. I, too, have noticed the reviews that sound like they’re taken right off the business’ promotional material.
I had wondered if there was some sort of connection between bookings and reviews – I’ve found, after the fact, that there were other motels available in the area I was staying, that weren’t listed on TripAdvisor. I understand that a location may not appear because a TripAdvisor member hasn’t stayed there yet, but surely in an area with 6 large chain motels, there should be reviews on more than 2 of them! My suspicious mind leads me to think that Expedia is getting some benefit from only listing 2 of the 6; however, if I do try to book a motel through TripAdvisor, a number of different travel websites come out besides Expedia. So the only other explanation is that the 2 motels have been promoting themselves, or suggesting to their guests that they provide a review.
Thanks for the article.
How do I boost my TripAdvisor rating? — hotel executive
Easy.
Give good quality service and good quality food. Maintain the physical plant of the establishment. Stop plundering the bottom line for your bonus. Find a personnel director who knows how to hire.
Many people are in the hotel business simply to make money. It is easy for me to believe they do not care if the business they own makes tires, cans peas or operates a bucket shop. Contrarily, some of us like to see the expression on guests’ face when they say wow about something. So we try to do the best.
We also try to outdo our competitors. And be one step ahead of the market. Of the customers, we aim to “exceed their expectations.” Doing that makes our job easy. If we fall down on that, then we simply meet their expectations. We can live with that.
Some hoteliers and restauranteurs see what they can get away with. They are the ones that consistently will have bad reviews.
So is TripAdvisor useful, irrespective it is owned by Expedia? I think it is. Its success lies in its huge number of reviews, and obviously reflects its popularity. If two percent of the reviews were rigged, I would be surprised.
One of the values of the Internet is that it has takes the power away from the press and puts it in the hands of the people. As the hippies used to say: Power to the People. And as the press was/is not perfect (just ask the New York Times), so it is with the Internet. But if there are a few bad-mouthters out there, other reviewers will neutralize them.
The Internet is a world in which the bullies and the manipulators will lose out. If hoteliers and restauranteurs want to stay in business, they will have to learn to do right. And the reviewers will give them reason to do so.
Power to the People, Dude.
To answer the thread title question, maybe. Especially if one unrealistically expects so-called perfect reviews, which they’re not as some people said.
It so happens a lot of people love using the site for whatever reason, despite its imperfections. If it ain’t TripAdvisor, then it’s some other review site like a few also stated.
Nailed it also. Learn to discern.
@Chris
Question. You say there are no studies which show a link between reviews and increased or decreased bookings. My question is, are there any surveys which suggest that there isn’t such a relationship?
The tenure of the article suggests that the lack of a study means that we should infer the lack of a causal link. That is not proper science. The lack of a study means that we don’t know if there is a causal link between reviews and bookings.
However, the anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly points to the existence of such a link.
@Carver, let me clarify. I haven’t spoken with a hotel executive or read a study that confirms there is any link between a higher TripAdvisor ranking and increased bookings.
What we have to go on so far is a) one person who says they’ve booked a room because of a better TripAdvisor ranking; and 2) a blogger who insists there is a link, but so far has declined to provide any verifiable numbers.
What can I say? I’m supposed to be skeptical. If I don’t see any convincing proof, I have to point it out.
I hope the TripAdvisor folks reading this blog will release some credible information to prove the correlation between rankings and bookings — if they have it.
@ Carver, Chris: Based on the popularity of Tripadvisor, there must be a relation. It will be very hard to quantify that relation, but based on anecdotal evidence and the page hits, it think it is safe to say that a lot of people allow themselves to be influenced based on what they see on Tripadvisor.
Personally, I think Tripadvisor is a tremendous source for finding reviews on smaller places to stay. B&Bs and non-chain hotels. For that tranche of the market, Tripadvisor can be make or break. If a small B&B has a couple of mentions of insects in the room, they will suffer. The larger chains have some more control over their image because they advertise and have name and image recognition.
The problem in quantifying the influence of Tripadvisor, is that web2.0-savy folks will not rely on one single source of information. They will consult other sources as well, such as traditional travel guides, word-of-mouth, other travel sites, and obviously the website of the place itself.
@Jasper
That is not necessarily a true statement. As Chris pointsout, anecdotal information is the worse sort of evidence that can be provided. My issue with the article is that it implies that there isn’t a relationship. Such an inference needs as much support as the blogger’s contention that there is a relationship.
The simple truth is that until someone can provide statistically valid information we don’t know the impact of the reviews, good or bad, have on properties.
Some of the problems with anecdotal information is that the pool is never random, but statistically skewed. For example, the mere fact that you actively participate on a travel blog means an increased likelihood of being computer literate, white collared professional, …(i.e. how many grocery clerks have substantial internet access while at work?)
Flyertalk for example attracts mostly professional men who travel as part of their business, and have a high opinion of themselves. Not exactly a representative sampling of….anything.
By contrast, this blog attracts a less contentious crowd. The blog (TRIPSO.com) which Chris is also associated with attracts mostly travel agents and those synmpathetics to that point of view.
So anecdotal information is something that must be viewed with great suspicion.
@Christopher: I’m a fan. (Just want to make that clear!) :)
But I’m surprised at your seemingly stubborn refusal to accept something that seems irrefutable just by virtue of simple logic: that the juggernaut which is TripAdvisor, with its massive database of user-submitted reviews, HAS an impact on hotel bookings.
Do we have numbers? Perhaps not…how would such numbers be obtained? How would such a study be run? A simple survey could at least provide some anecdotal evidence – but that’s ALL it would provide. Certainly MORE anecdotal evidence than in this thread (and I’m surprised to see that you quote my one post as the ONLY anecdotal evidence you’ve ever seen on this topic), but it would still just be travelers, like me, claiming that TripAdvisor impacted their booking choices.
Do you really need an official study to acknowledge that it has an impact? Can you not just look at all the comment activity in this article right here to convince yourself that the link exists? And what kind of data would convince you? Doesn’t the fact that lots of your own readers are telling you that it impacts our decisions, provide a clear enough indication of a link? Do you need to see scientifically validated data indicating what actual percentage of visitors to TripAdvisor alter their booking decisions based on having read a specific number of reviews? Is that much data even necessary?
You say you are not convinced there is a link. Well, I can give you at least one. There is a hotel in Stockholm that is about to be several hundred dollars richer because of their reviews that I read on Trip Advisor. Further, there are two hotels in Belize, three in Bali, one in Costa Rica, and another in Tahiti that I can tell you straight out were chosen because of my research that included Trip Advisor reviews. Anecdotal? Sure. But it’s a real, valid, true link! And simple logic will tell you that, out of the tens of thousands of travelers that visit Trip Advisor every year, at least a few of them are like me. :)
Of course there’s a link.
@DavidZ: “Learn to discern” LOVE it! LOL! :D
Are you going to stop using eBay because some people on there are scammers? No, you just take an extra moment to evaluate the credibility of the seller/buyer by looking at his/her history on the site.
Same deal with TripAdvisor – it’s very easy to distinguish the people who have been reviewing hotels in different parts of the world for a long time (highly credible) from those who have posted one glowing/horrible review of a hotel that contrasts sharply with other reviews (suspicious).
The internet as a whole is full of info that requires the reader to think – to make a common sense evaluation of the credibility – why should TripAdvisor be any different?
@LeeAnne
See my post about anecdotal information and why Chris is absolutely right to be skeptical about it.
i post a bit on tripadvisor, and i preface each review with the disclaimer that my spouse is a starwood employee, and because of that, we stay at starwood properties. does that make me biased? some might perceive me as such, which is why i state the connection up front. however, i do try to be honest, and if there’s a negative, i mention it. having a connection to a property doesn’t automatically discount my opinion, but just like every other review, take it with a grain of salt. when i read the reviews for somewhere i’d like to stay, i always look at the negative comments, because i think that’s more important than the positive. is it something i can live with? then i’ll still consider staying there.
I’m with Chris. As a researcher, I have learned that one cannot rely on stories and anecdotal evidence as “proof” that something is true. It must be backed up by statistical evidence.
And I’m adding my two cents… I find TripAdvisor to be absolutely worthless for two reasons. 1) There aren’t enough reviews available, sometimes one (or none) for the properties I’m researching. 2) I second Bob’s comment above about only paying attention to the negative reviews and weeding out the crackpots. And there are usually a lot fewer of them, so it’s easier to sort through them and look for recurring themes, such as “surly staff” or “insect problems.” But I need more reviews than TripAdvisor offers on the properties I look at in order to do this. I found Hotels.com more useful.
I’ve been inspired by many of the great comments above and my own experience to post my own very limited “Tripadvisor user guide” on my blog today.
I think the person who said we have to act as responsible members of a community (in this case the Tripadvisor community) in a web 2.0 world to use information responsibly, completely hit the nail on the head.
But it’s still tough to use Tripadvisor properly with all the required checks and caveats in niche destinations where there just isn’t enough of a sample of reviews.
In those cases, there’s still a role for the trusty Frommers or Lonely Planet!
Chris:
I read with interest your report and posts on Frommer vs. Trip Advisor. It stimulated me to pass along an unfortunate one-night visit to a new and popular hotel in Las Vegas, South Point. First, my daughter-in-law, who recommended the hotel, offered to make our reservations after she had given us a rave review of it. She used hotels.com to book it (although I have not been pleased with hotels.com performance in the past) and booked the reservation in my name although she had an account with hotels.com and received “credit” for the booking. She gave me a file number from hotels.com and assured me that our reservation had been made in our names.
When we checked in, no record of our booking was found although a booking in my daughter-in-law’s name was found. The hotel would not accept our request , even though rooms were available. They told me i had to supply an ID that matched the reservation in my daughter-in-law’s name. My daughter-in-law was about 500 miles away in Twin Falls, ID. South Point’s stupid clerk would not let us use “her” reservation without that ID. So, we were at an impasse. I begged him to cancel her reservation let me start fresh. But, as you probably know, hotels.com collects room rate at time of booking and of course i supplied my AmEx card as my daughter-in-law was booking that reservation.
We finally persuaded South Point’s desk clerk to forget about that hotel.com booking and sell us a room because we had been traveling all day and were tired. He was quite prompt about doing that but said he couldn’t contact hotels.com to cancel their booking and i would probably get a no-show charge on my credit card. I said I would deal with hotels.com myself.
He assigned us room 843. It was spacious, as promised by my son-in-law, and nicely furnished. Then, after unpacking, we looked at our bathroom. I didn’t notice it at first but then, after surveying tub and vanity, I realized we had been given a handicapped room. No mention had been made of this at South Point’s front desk and I was livid! I cannot believe any hotel would do that to a customer without notification. Also, next morning I discovered only one coffee serving and linens for only one person. Dripping wet, I had to call Housekeeping to get more coffee and more towels. They were promptly delivered. My wife had to put her cosmetic regalia on a vanity that was not even two feet wide.
This practice of sneaking people into a disabled person’s facility has always been a pet peeve, but we were too tired to pack up and change to a conventionally furnished room. Yesterday morning, as I checked out, I discussed my rage and disappointment with their cashier who promised faithfully to discuss it with their manager.
Now I have to pass this story on to both hotels.com and to South Point’s GM, but I thought these issues – intermediary failure by hotels.com to book as promised, and hotel failure to warn that we were assigned to a handicapped room – might resonate with some of your readers.
Rolfe
@Rolfe – interesting story – but I have to mention that if I saw this review on TripAdvisor, it’s one of the ones that I would pretty much ignore. Okay, so you had a problem with Hotels.com – nothing to do with the hotel. You had a boneheaded front-desk clerk – note to self: be sure my reservation is solid because this property has one bonheaded front-desk clerk. You ended up in a handicapped room: not an issue as far as I’m concerned. In my experience, many handicapped rooms are actually better than the others, with more spacious bathrooms, but even if it’s not, I don’t see what the problem is about a few handicapped items (bars in the bathroom etc.). A hotel won’t always have handicapped guests, and if I’m among the last to arrive that night, I can understand why I would get one of those rooms. You didn’t have enough towels – big deal, you called and they quickly brought them.
But…how was the hotel? What information did your review provide to assist other travelers?
This is what so many of us mean about reading reviews with a critical eye, and discounting the ones that don’t apply. I imagine you would probably give this hotel a low rating…but in your entire review, the ONLY thing that would have any impact on another traveler at all is being aware that they have a moron at the front desk. Good to know — but it doesn’t help anyone make a decision about whether or not to go to that hotel.
Being a hotel owner it is obvious that TripAdvisor favors the chain hotels and those that are a part of GDS or expedia and hotels.com booking engines. I monitor my trip advsor postings on a daily basis along with those of my competitiors and after a year and half of doing so, it is very obvious that their algorithms show favoritism for those they are going to make money from and allow direct link access from the tripadvisor site.
I’m fully with LeeAnne on her comments to Rolfe … I would also totally ignore a review like that on TripAdvisor. Aside from that, though, what’s the big deal with getting a handicapped room? What about that made you “livid?” Were you offended that they allegedly sneaked you “into a disabled person’s facility?” I really do not understand your self-described “rage” at the situation …
Good info
I use TripAdvisor as one tool for preparing vacations and business travel. The utility of any particular review is questionable, but in the aggregate a critical reader can get some useful information.
Personally, I find non-professional reviews to be more useful than single point-of-view critiques.
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.
I am a travel blogger, have written 4 hotel/travel e-books (of which one is about Understanding Hotel Reviews). I am not including my site or full name because I am not here to promote me.
I am also a hotel desk clerk and can add this to the great responses I’ve seen above.
Anecdotal or not, people do pay attention to reviews. We personally get top marks (though not 100% – who does?) and I can’t tell you how many people tell me they read the reviews and chose us. I can’t tell you what percentage as a scientific fact but I would estimate we garner a couple dozen rooms per month from our reviews.
Therefore, we also monitor Exp, T/A and Trvlcty for reviews. We do NOT, however, “game” the system, plant reviews or bury our competitors. The reward for phonying up a review is not worth the risk of being kicked off T/A so even if it were in our best interest, we don’t do it and quite honestly, we don’t have time to ‘play games’. I would suggest 99% of all hotels don’t either. So in the end, I think you are all giving hoteliers too much credit.
And affirming the wonderful and accurate previous responses, people need to use logic, common sense and a bit of gut feeling when reading reviews about anything from restaurants to books. Beauty is often truly in the eye of the beholder and not necessarily related to deception and guile. Alternately, people with an axe to grind can find fault with the Taj Mahal if they so choose so the ‘taken with a grain of salt’ advice is very valid.
Yes, the possibility of impropriety is present but in my 6+years of experience, it is a non issue.
I own and operate a small hotel in Cambodia and have a perspective on Trip Advisor that I am sure is not unique to those in my position.
Tripadvisor is like most rating sites primarily a forum for the discontented. While my hotel receives some very good reviews and our rating is high it is clear to me that virtually all of our guests who have posted complaints on the site are the ones who NEVER complain to me or my staff. They are also often the ones who break our non smoking rules, damage our rooms and when asked to pay for it get mad. They then take it out on the hotel on T/A. The worst “Gaming” of the system thus comes from these kinds of abuses.
The problem therein lies with the fact that trip advisor will do nothing to help a hotel identify a guest to verify if that person ever really stayed with you. This simple act could help prevent many reviews which are just plainly unfair and vengeful or from competitors. Simply having the poster put in the actual dates of stay and country of passport and room number is all that would be needed for most hotels to identify them and then post a meaningful response while keeping the poster anonymous.
As for changing the rhetoric it seems to me that the worst abuse of all is the use of the word “unbiased”. All the reviews are by their very nature biased since they are the personal opinions of people who have paid to stay in an establishment. This by no means meets any criteria of “unbiased”.
While I am sure that some hotels try to “game” the system to my mind a much more insidious problem is that to a small hotel like mine (10-15 rooms) one bad review has a much greater effect to our survivability than a hundred do to a big chain hotel. T/A is not willing to admit that their system is flawed and skewed in favor of big hotels and restaurants and I do believe they have no idea how much time it takes all of us to monitor and answer what are many times bogus complaints. All the while taking our advertising dollars to support their site.
There are many things about T/A that need investigation and I applaud those who do and bring to light those things that are questionable.
Alan Perry
Sihanoukville, Kingdom of Cambodia
if you want to see the most suspiciously over-hyped hotel on tripadvisor then look no further than
La Villa Marbella
If you’d like to see a very nasty property that, according to numerous reviews, refuses to give rates and actually chases out potential guests off their property, do a search on the Long Beach Motor Inn, Maine.