New TripAdvisor whistleblower claims: some reviews are “totally fraudulent”

I agree that there should be away to receive more authentic reviews, but then you could say this about any web site that reviews anything, products, or services, I am sure that TA is not the only web site where fraudulent reviews are posted. Again, when I use TA I then match their reviews with reviews from other web sites to get a better idea of the hotel, restaurant I am reading about.

“have delivered a devastating blow to the Expedia-owned site.”:
“recent TripAdvisor rating scandal, ”

And what does this amount too? 92 reviews with warnings! To say this is so much hyperbole would be an understatement.

Sorry Chris, but I don’t see 92 suspect reviews a “devasting blow” or “scandal” Let me know when you have a REAL story!.

As a regular user of Trip Advisor (bpdogs), I have yet to have a bad experience. I’ve had some disappointments, but those were at hotels that had a mixed bag of reviews.

I think the real problem that some have with TA is that they cannot control the content. Like Jasper said, the print publications are not exactly unbiaed. Hoteliers routinely give freebies to industry folks for the purpose of “education”. One reviewer friend of mine turned down over 3k worth of amenities at a posh hotel as he was reviewing that property.

My partner and I have used TripAdvisor for dozens of recommendations and have always posted there as well. We posted an inaccurate account of a hotel (same name, same town but different owners). It was a glowing report but “our” hotel pointed out that we were in error with the duplicate name. I contacted TripAdvisor and they changed the address and particulars immediately. Now the cute, adorable, owner-involved hotel is listed and not the class C hotel with the same name.

We have had a lot of use from this website and feel that the seasoned traveler can, for the most part, pick out the made up items.

I echo the comments about TA never being a perfect system and I think that is OK for my purposes. I stumbled upon TA about 5 years ago while researching a trip to New Zealand and booked a boutique hotel in Queenstown based on the TA reviews. I found the positive reviews very close to my own experience and then started posting hotel reviews of most hotel properties I’ve stayed at over the last several years. I generally use TA as a guidepost to avoid a clear “stinker” of a property but feel that I can generally get an honest picture of the hotel from the vast majority of reviews. My own reviews tend to be rather nuanced–I rarely announce a “best ever” or “worst ever” and I try to tailor my expectations to the type of property (three star vs 5 star, for example).

So what’s so frustrating for me about TA? Three times I’ve had reviews rejected by the site for downright odd reasons.

The first time involved a stay at a Four Seasons. I commented that this particular property did not appear to live up to the standards of other Four Seasons I have stayed at, or the property I had a summer job (while in college) at over 15 years ago (different Four Seasons, different city). Yes, a summer job while in college over a decade ago now bans me from commenting on any Four Seasons hotel. Even though my review was neither a shill nor a torpedo.

Second review involved a Homewood Suites property in which I disagreed with a prior reviewer about the location of the property. Bottom line, this reviewer was completely wrong about the location (a quick Google search could confirm this for anyone) and my attempt to correct this clear error was rejected as being “hostile” to another reviewer. I responded to the rejection with a bit of incredulouty, especially since there are a lot of truly down right mean and hostile reviews on the sight. TA eventually posted my review as originally written.

My third rejection was the most bizarre. I wrote about a Hampton Inn in a small town. I had several odd occurrences at the property, including electrical problems, no satellite tv, things being moved around in my room, including all of my toiletries being dumped in the sink while I was out for the day. I happened to meet someone at a local restaurant who used to work at the property. When I told him about my odd stay, he joked that the “word” at the property was that the place was haunted. My review, which noted the odd occurrences and my “haunted” conversation was initially accepted by TA and remained on the site for many months before being suddenly pulled. I received an email saying my review did not conform to TA’s rules. Not sure if TA is afraid of ghosts, or of guests speaking to randomly encountered former employees or what.

Bottom line, to have these types of reviews pulled means someone is reading reviews pretty closely and thinking long and hard about them. So why can’t they pull the obvious shills or bad apples?

OK so dwronda is a legitimate local but his review is far from it. He/she/they have never been here, either as a visitor or a guest. His description of our hotel beggars belief as anyone of the reviews on our listing should tell you.

Recent visitors have said that they are sceptical about such good reviews but in this instance..

And as for Andalusin Rugs. They are woven in Andalucia but not in Cartajima as dwronda claims to have seen

If you look at their website it says this in so many words and look at the pictures on the home page. Two of them are of Los Castanos!!

And by the way ‘I grew up in San Francisco’, no Brit would use American language or examples and the Hotel Molino del Puente is the other side of Ronda not in Cartajima.

Oh and we have already responded to the location and we don’t claim to be ‘in Ronda’. Please be good enough to look at our website too!

Scandal? What scandal? Chris, you’re way over the top here! So some of the TA postings are fraudulent. You look at an array of postings, ignoring the gushing or damning, and figure things out from there.

Everything I’ve ever posted on TA has been listed accurately, but I know that someone with a personal beef can skew things to the negative. I barely recognized a hotel I visit annually from a couple of horrible reviews. In fact, some of what these reviewers wrote were outright lies, as the accommodations / facilities they described don’t even exist at that particular hotel. When I took a closer look, I noticed very similar language in the two reviews. They were from two women who live in the same town — coincidence? I think not. They were traveling together and something didn’t go right during their visit — who knows what ; even the best-run establishments has off days — but rather than one or the other writing a review, they wrote two to do double damage. Instead of writing an honest review of their unsatisfactory experience, their intention was to punish the hotel by discouraging potential visitors.

So, yes, you need to take any review on TA with a grain of salt; compare with other sites/sources, and make an informed decision.

Hi Jay, because we rarely have families and certainly didn’t when he claims to have been here. With 6 rooms you get to know all guests pretty well and if someone was this disatisfied we would certainly have known about it.

If ,as he claims, dw has been to 103 destinations how come has has never reviewed anywhere other than Ronda and Jerez?

If dw is real perhaps he would like to say who he is!?

On the positive side dw thanks for the raising of Cartajima’s profile!

JW

We provide HotelReviews looking at the relationship between the design and operational criteria of hotels on our website, lavishly illustrated with photographs and some video. For Reviews we stay in the hotel for two nights to both experience and photograph. For Miniviews we photograph without staying spending half a day walking around the hotel taking our own photographs. We serve the design industry and take no money from hotels. We are only interested in efficient design and how design relates to brand and star ratings. We add about 4 Reviews or Miniviews a month to the site covering the US, Europe,Africa and Asia. Access is free. We have 126 hotels – 98 full Reviews and the rest Miniviews, both of which use around 25 images of the interiors.

We used to be linked to by Tripadvisor but they changed their policies and stopped linking to external sites last July since when our reader numbers and pages read have grown considerably…

As a TA user, reviewer, and Destination Expert, I’ve learned to take reviews with a grain of salt. It’s an open website, for crying out loud, not the Michelin Guide or a scientific study.

Reviews that are too glowing are disregarded, as are reviews that are extremely critical (anybody can have a bad day). Reviewers with a proven history of reviews or those who post their actual photos of the place get a lot more credibility in my book.

Do your own homework and don’t believe everything you read on TripAdvisor – the site is only as reliable and responsible as its users.

The hotel in question only has totally fawning reviews on TripAdvisor – and an overall score of 4 1/2 stars:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g1462719-d534998-Reviews-Los_Castanos-Cartajima_Costa_del_Sol_Andalusia.html

What is this guy whining about? Do you guys check before you give these people a soapbox?

There is another issue here. What if TripAdvisor itself manipulating ratings to benefit certain Hotels? What if it has a vested interest in the success or failure of certain properties? What has happened to me certainly points to that direction.
My wife & I are avid travelers. We like to consider ourselves retired though I’m 39 & she’s 30 because our love for travel is so great that it is all that we want to do for the rest of our lives.
One of the most important tools that aid us in our journeys is (was) Tripadvisor.com. It did happen a couple of times that we read rave reviews about certain hotels & decided to stay there only to find the place terrible. Whatever might have been the case I, being a loyal tripadvisor follower felt it my duty & obligation to post my own reviews to help my fellow travelers in their choice of hotels.
We stayed at one such highly recommended hotel in Rome called Welrome based on the amazing tripadvisor reviews & recommendations. When we actually checked in this property was so terrible that there are no words that I can use that would be strong enough to elucidate our horror. We promptly checked out & moved in to a better & cheaper property across the road.
Upon returning home I felt duly obliged to post our review on this terrible hotel on tripadvisor so as to warn other unsuspecting travelers about this hellhole. I received the confirmation of my damning review having been posted by tripadvisor.com.
When we had a similar experience at Tongsai Bay in Koh Samui (Thailand) last week where I found the reviews much more glorifying of a non-deserving hotel I had a niggling and worrying doubt, was tripadvisor manipulating reviews to suit their interests? It was out of this curiosity that I accessed the reviews of Welrome Hotel & to my horror I found that my review had been deleted. Why?
I could understand if certain cronies of Welrome had posted fake reviews to unjustifiably glorify this sad & disgusting property. What baffles me is that why would tripadvisor delete a genuine review from a regular patron of their website like myself.
This episode has shattered my faith in Tripadvisor & I would like to share my increased suspicion with everyone that reviews on Tripadvisor might need to be taken with a sackful of salt.

Our small inn was just slandered on TripAdvisor. They allow anyone to write anything about all hotels and inns. It is obviously a competitor or just plain malicious. All of our 78 guests have loved our inn. Our rooms are not small as they claimed. They are all well over 500 square feet. Does anyone know how to get these fraudulent reviews removed? TripAdvisor is doing nothing for the hotel community with this type of review. They need to screen more closely. Our fraudulent review states they are from Minnesota and stayed in November of 09. We only had 5 guests in Nov of 09 and they were all from IL and one from WI. We have all of the Nov 09′s written reviews and they all loved our inn. The tripadvisor fraudulent postings have got to stop!

I have done some investigation here about Tripadvisor. I have worked with hotels for many years and this is what I can say for sure.
Hotel owners, mostly independant hotels, have lost control of their industry. Third parties have taken over while having little or no investment. These third parties, i.e. Tripadvisor, Hotels.com, Expedia and Hotwire, all of which are owned by Barry Diller have turned the independant owner into a pawn by having the ability to manipulate the reveiws in such a way that they can actually redirect customers without them even knowing it.
How so? O.K. Go to Tripadvisor pick a city and see what you find. A list of hotels in a rating system from one to whatever number. If we believe the reveiws some might have 15 reviews and are rated # 1, 2 or 3 (often these hotels have only recently signed up with these third paties). Then one will have 100 reviews and be rated somewhere in the so so area. Yet the 100 reveiws have 75 very good ratings. The highest rated one could very well be an old hotel under new management and it might have been a dump in its previous listing life. The new hotel owner swiftly loads his fake reviews by having his family and associates post fake 5 star reveiws. Tripadvisor can not stop these fakes if they are loaded in by differant computors with differant i.p. addresses. Think Kinko’s, UPS stores, etc. or even Office Depot while appearing to be looking to purchasing a new laptop.

This also applies to the other side of the picture. Someone loads bad reviews of their competitor. Or a crazy customer that did not get a discount and just creates new email accounts and looks like 30 differant people. This all happens on Tripadvisor every day. Because they do not require proof of you even having stayed at the hotel.

Now lets look at how Tripadvisor makes money. They make a % of every unit booked on Hotels.com, Expedia, Hotwire or an affiliate. No you say tripadvisor does not get a commission. Well kind of? They get a pay per click fee from most of their links. So the more they keep you going in circles the better. More clicks.
However Expedia, Hotwire and Hotels.com are owned by the same person that owns Tripadvisor. 25-35% of the hotel rate is what they get. Some hotels have contracts that are better for Expedia, etc. so you are now very cleverly directed to these hotels. How? By manipulating the reveiws that is how. They remove negative reveiws or hold back positive ones. Do they write them? No, they just manuver them. Which is the same thing in my book.
Also, most of the time there is no discount at all. You just think you got one. Just check the room rate or call the hotel before booking and you will see that.

Now in the beginning these third parties were great for independant hotels because it got them in with the big boys on the web. Where can a small independant advertize. They could not take ads in every city in the world. So that was good in the start. However, when Barry Diller saw the manipulation that was possible he began to purchase these companies and here we sit today all arguing with one another while he rakes in the cash.
The last thing that no one gets is this. Third parties have raised the price of rooms over the years. Hoteliers have adjusted prices to include their third party’s commissions. Just a fact of doing business. As usual the angels become the devil and that what third party bookers have become.
Always call the hotel before booking. Because third party bookings get the worst rooms in a hotel because your booking is classified as a bargain hunter. If you book direct you get treated better and you have a direct relationship with the hotel not some third party that holds the hotel, less commision, funds for up to 30 days or more. Many times if there is a problem the hotel will tell Expedia to refund a guest payment. In that event what sometimes happens is the guest is told that the hotel would not refund the money. Then the hotel does not get the funds and Expedia keeps it all.
No you say! They would not do that! Well let me show you how far they will go. Lets say you book a $100.00 + tax and the Hotel is paid $70.00 + tax. Where do you think the tax on $30.00 goes. Nowhere, Expedia keeps it. Now if a company will cheat every city in the world out of sales taxes what do you think they will do to you. “BARRY DILLER” you are a piece of work!

When you look at a series of reviews on TripAdvisor, the ones with the greatest disparity between satisfied and disgruntled raises a red flag.

For example, have a look at reviews for Camelot Castle Hotel in Cornwall.
Reviews are either hyperbolic and written by someone who really, really likes the word ‘magical,’ and people who had a miserable time being hounded by their hosts to purchase bad paintings and admire the “creativity” of owners John Mappin and Ted Stourton, the perpetrator of the aforementioned paintings.

Reports of mold, leaks, holes in walls, fiberglass pod bathrooms, drafts and inadequate blankets are common.

From the sound of it, these two hoteliers are more concerned with self promotion and spreading the word of L. Ron Hubbard (did I mention they’re Scientologists?) than catering to their customers’ needs.

In fact, this would be a heck of a story on its own. Camelot Castle Hotel is weird with a beard. Her name is Irina.

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/help/why_not_remove_fraudulent_property_from_TA