Steve Kaufer is the founder and chief executive of TripAdvisor — a site that made headlines recently when it warned that some of its hotel reviews might have been manipulated. I asked Kaufer about the site, the credibility of user-generated reviews, and the future of social media.
Q: When it comes to user-generated hotel and restaurant reviews, I think it’s safe to say TripAdvisor is by far the most dominant site. Can you give me a sense of the size, traffic and overall influence of TripAdvisor?
Kaufer: TripAdvisor has nearly 25 million reviews and opinions on more than 490,000 hotels and attractions, more than 11 million registered members, and operates in 14 countries and 10 different languages. We have more than 25 million monthly visitors to our site, and have acquired 13 other travel brands. In terms of influence, a May 2008 Jupiter consumer travel survey reported that 76 percent of people find reviews from like-minded people most useful.
Q: Let me ask you about last week’s Beat of Hawaii-Arthur Frommer dust-up. TripAdvisor is now warning users about hotels gaming in the review process. Can you tell me why you decided to do this, how long you’ve had these warnings, and how many reviews are affected?
Kaufer: We’ve been posting the warnings since 2006. We view our red badge and rating drop as the best punishment for properties trying to manipulate the system. A couple of people have asked why we don’t drop these properties from the site entirely. We think the red badge is a better punishment, and provides more information to travelers so they can make the most educated and informed decisions before they book. We also wouldn’t want hotels with very poor traveler reviews to use such a banning on the site as a loophole to get out. That’s exactly what poorly run properties want — to be taken off TripAdvisor.
Q: One of the things TripAdvisor uses to catch bogus reviews is a computer program. Why can’t the algorithm tag these fake write-ups?
Kaufer: We have three primary methods to insure review integrity. Prior to posting, every review is screened and a team of quality assurance specialists investigates suspicious ones. This group brings a wide range of professional experience, including expertise in credit card fraud, loss prevention and identity theft. We also use proprietary automated tools to help identify attempts to subvert the system, and our community helps screen our content and report suspicious activity. These systems do catch the vast majority of suspicious reviews.
Q: What would you say to readers of your site who are concerned about the integrity of your hotel and restaurant reviews?
Kaufer: We believe our 23 million reviews and opinions are authentic, unbiased, and from real travelers, which is why we enjoy tremendous user loyalty. The sheer volume of reviews we have for an individual property allows travelers to base their decisions on the opinions of many and provides an additional safeguard. After all, any individual review is just that… a review by one person who may or may not have the same tastes as you, or be in a good or bad mood when they wrote the review. But when looking at the average of hundreds of reviews for a single property, the collective wisdom shines through and presents a complete picture of the property.
Q: Some TripAdvisor critics were quick to add their “I-told-you-sos” last week. Can you understand where these folks are coming from? Could you help us make some sense of why they’ve been critical of your site?
Kaufer: Some of those critics have a horse in the race. Professional guide books and travel agents are losing audience to TripAdvisor and other UGC sites. Forrester research shows that 68 percent of travelers read reviews from other travelers before they book. The same research shows only 38 percent turn to professionally written content. The average guidebook takes 15 months from manuscript submission to hitting the store shelf. TripAdvisor gets 13 new posts every minute of every day, so it’s the freshest travel information available.
We don’t have anything against professionally written reviews. In fact, we have links to many professional reviews on TripAdvisor today, as we have had since we launched the site. We’re happy to have our visitors find all the available information on the Web to help them make the right travel decision for them.
Q: How do you use TripAdvisor when you’re on the road? And how do you think people should use the site?
Kaufer: TripAdvisor has a lot of features that are valuable at different stages of the trip. When in the initial planning stages, I’ll use the inspiration section on the home page to help me select a destination. I’ll use our flights product to find the best airfare, and then use our hotel mapping functionality to pick the best hotel near where I want to be. If I’m traveling on business, I head to the business center, as that section highlights the hotels that are good for business, as well as offer restaurant suggestions for a business dinner. When I’m traveling with my kids, I’ll look for top-value hotels which save me some money, and I’ll read the reviews written by folks who traveled with their kids. And like all of our visitors, when I read the reviews, I take the best and worst reviews with a grain of salt, and focus on what the majority of reviewers have to say. My favorite ‘hidden’ feature of TripAdvisor is our forums. No matter what I ask in the forums, I always seem to get a good answer within 24 hours.
Q: Is there a way in which people are using TripAdvisor that you think they should not?
Kaufer: From a consumer perspective, there’s not necessarily a wrong way to use TripAdvisor. I think some of the posts on your blog represent unique and useful ways to use our site.
Q: Oh, thanks. I want to ask you about services such as Returnity, that funnel positive reviews about a property back into TripAdvisor. Doesn’t a hotel using a service like this have an advantage over another hotel that relies on the organic review process for its rating? Is that fair?
Kaufer: My understanding of Returnity-type services is that they facilitate communication between hotels and their guests and, by requesting feedback on a stay, give the hotel an idea of who might write a positive versus negative review. Nothing from Returnity is pre-programmed and uploaded into TripAdvisor.
Q: Do you have any statistical evidence that a positive review on TripAdvisor leads to more bookings or that a negative review takes away bookings? If so, could you please tell me what it says?
Kaufer: We have partners who feature TripAdvisor reviews on their sites, and claim that their bookings have increased — in one case, doubled — with the inclusion of these reviews. And these include both positive and negative reviews. We work with a lot of properties who have found TripAdvisor widgets and badges to be valuable marketing tools.
Anecdotally, we hear from travelers that negative reviews aren’t nearly as impactful as how a property handles them. We do a lot of outreach to business owners and encourage them to use the management response tool that’s available on our site. We know there are always two sides to every story, and we encourage property managers to share their side of the story, or simply apologize if a mistake was made. Anecdotally, we also hear from property owners that TripAdvisor has helped them grow their business.
With millions of travelers using TripAdvisor daily, it is hard to imagine that we don’t influence where travelers are choosing to stay. However, it isn’t something we’ve tried to measure.
Q: With the introduction of video on the new iPhone, we may be poised for a shift from “tell me” to “show me” user-generated reviews. How is TripAdvisor going to position itself in world where information is exchanged in real time, and in a more multimedia way?
Kaufer: We’ve been encouraging travelers to upload photos and video to TripAdvisor for a long time. We’d love to see the use of these tools increase — anything to help travelers make more informed decisions about their trip.
Q: Let me ask about your slogan, which is, “Get the truth. Then go.” It seems to me that the content you’ll find on TripAdvisor is highly subjective, and that your recent warnings are a concession that the reviews are nothing more than one person’s — or company’s — opinion. Do you have any plans to change your slogan, now that you’ve conceded that some of your ratings may have been manipulated?
Kaufer: It’s never been a secret that reviews are subjective, and that they are individuals’ opinions. That’s the power of user-generated content. It’s up to the traveler, with the help of our popularity index and filters, to review the data that’s meaningful for them, and to listen to the wisdom of the crowds. Everyone’s true travel experience is their own. I’m certainly biased, but I’ll always prefer a hundred reviews from real travelers, each recounting a different experience, than one review from a professional writer who is basing his or her opinion on a single experience with a property. TripAdvisor is still the best place to get the truth, then go.
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There is a thinking error that much of the established industry makes, when evaluating and criticizing web2.0 content. They disrespect any information that is not being published according to old-skool journalistic standards: allow both sides to comment, be independent, check and recheck. This all to ensure reliability.
They do not realize that:
1) Much online (and print) content is not written that way anymore. For instance, many sources are to reliant on sponsors to ever criticize them. Especially in the travel industry, many “travel journalists” are given free stays or meals. Check Ruth Reichl on how that corrupts honest reviews http://www.ruthreichl.com/?ID=2
2) It is not the individual reviews that count in web2.0. It is the synergistic totality that counts. Users understand very well that some people are grumpy or easily excited. As much as you would trust the advise of one paragraph in a guide book, you need 15 paragraphs, preferably from three websites in web2.0 to be sure.
However, it is really hard to corrupt 25 million reviews, just as it is really hard for a guidebook publisher to visit as much hotels and restaurants as the public does.
Last. Anybody who doesn’t believe in the power of web2.0, go ask the Iranian leadership how that’s going for them.
It would have been insightful if Mr. Kaufer were asked to comment on the Cruise Critic/RCCL Royal Champions broo ha ha, as TripAdvisor owns Cruise Critic and Cruise Critic’s President, Kathleen Tucker, reports directly to Mr. Kaufer. Does Cruise Critic’s facilitation of the RCCL Royal Champions program reflect TripAdvisor policy? It certainly impacts directly on the credibility and objectivity of user generated content.
From Jaunted (Conde Nast):
Royal Caribbean Cruises Has Web 2.0 Viral Infection
No surprise here: Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has a viral infection. For once, however, it’s not the Norovirus but that new-fangled byproduct of Web 2.0, the viral marketing infiltration. According to Consumerist, a group of fifty “Royal Champions” was outed by their own creator, the Customer Insight Group, as being a successful project whereby frequent positive cruise commenting on sites such as CruiseCritic was rewarded with free cruises and other perks.
So what’s the big deal? Well, it seems that the “Royal Champions” weren’t always up front about their status as compensated reviewers, effectively misleading readers of CruiseCritic forums with their positive comments. Add to this the fact that CruiseCritic admins assisted Royal Caribbean in choosing the fifty, with one of the stipulations being quantity of posts, “with many having over 10,000 message board posts on various Royal Caribbean topics.” From here, the hole just gets deeper.
Now that many RC fans feel slighted at not having made the ranks and most everyone else is disgusted at the covert trade of cruising for happy juicing, the trustworthiness of such forums is under fire.
Due to CruiseCritic’s ownership by TripAdvisor, which is in turn under the Expedia blanket of travel sites, a viral marketing stunt gone awry could possibly continue to negatively ripple. Does news like this affect your ability to trust good reviews on travel sites, or do you already consider yourself an excellent shill-spotter enough to weed out the solicited from the unsolicited? While this whole ordeal is mired in serious muckety-muck, let’s hope it serves as a lesson for future viral marketers and as an argument for transparency.
Interesting one on one. One thing I noticed on Tripadvisor is that alot of the reviewers are not as detailed as one would like to see. Regardless if the review is good or bad, alot do not go into detail about the unit/apt/hotel etc. I made sure that on my last trip I was as detailed about the unit as possible. Uploading photos is another issue they should look into. There doesn’t seem to be enough photos of the units. When a reviewer does submit photos (like I do), it seems that there is a limit to how many. Sometimes 10 photos is simply not enought to illustrate the good/bad of the hotel. Hopefully when they start adding video to the reviews, maybe then we can see what the unit really look like and make a better judgement call.
Interesting one on one. One thing I noticed on Tripadvisor is that alot of the reviewers are not as detailed as one would like to see. Regardless if the review is good or bad, alot do not go into detail about the unit/apt/hotel etc. I made sure that on my last trip I was as detailed about the unit as possible. Uploading photos is another issue they should look into. There doesn’t seem to be enough photos of the units. When a reviewer does submit photos (like I do), it seems that there is a limit to how many. Sometimes 10 photos is simply not enought to illustrate the good/bad of the hotel. Hopefully when they start adding video to the reviews, maybe then we can see what the unit really look like and make a better judgement call.
Sorry, forgot to add great post! Can’t wait to see your next post!
As a travel consultant for over 30 years who works 60 plus hours a week trying to match my leisure clients with the destinations and hotel, inn, or resort, that best fits their needs, style and taste for the particular trip they are taking (honeymoon, anniversary, romantic getaway), I have mixed feelings in the last few years about the validity of many comments on trip advisor and do NOT feel they do enough checking at all, on the comments of travelers.
I travel at least 5 to 10 trips a year, checking in and out of hotels, trying out restaurants and tour companies, many times on my own money, so I can remain unbiased in consulting with my clients.
And I was astounded a few years ago when I made a trip to one of my favorite small Caribbean islands, I stayed in 3 hotels during my 6 nights of close inspection. I had only intended on staying in 2 of them.
I went 2 nights ahead of the Island’s Tourist Board Fam trip for selected travel agents, so I could look around on my own, and stay in a hotel that had high ratings on Trip Advisor.
The Resident Manager told me that he read Trip Advisor every morning at home before coming to the hotel, to see what comments were made about his hotel and also had his key staff members to the same thing, and at their weekly meeting discussed it.
He had worked very hard since coming to that hotel from another top property to correct and teach his staff, and had moved the hotel higher in the rankings of Trip Advisor by really listening to those comments and improving his hotel.
I applauded his efforts as it showed. Even though he was very careful in what he said about the next hotel I was going to check into, (based on trip advisor comments, it was in the top 10) he warned me that since I was a person who honestly looked at everything, I would probably find it hard to fathom how the next hotel stayed in the top 10 on Trip Advisor for that island.
He was correct. This hotel had been sold about 8 months before, by an owner who was very well liked, but had run out of money, renovating his small hotel and quietly sold it. Most travel agents and the general public were not aware of this.
The new owner had grand plans, moved in construction equipment and huge bags of supplies in the front and parking lot, which caused lots of dirt, tearing up of the flowers and shrubs, and made it quite an eyesore as one arrived by taxi or car down the driveway.
The swimming pool, which was supposed to have been totally redown, was cracked, with wierd looking water, and the lounge chairs around had seen better days. Since the pool was right next to the small separate check in building, you could not help but notice this.
Then came the rooms, plumbing did not work correctly, the cable tv was always on the fritz, and the air conditioning either worked some time or did not, it was a crap shoot.
They had one great asset, the place was on a great beach, but their beach stand with the “comp” snorkel gear, beach chairs, beach towels, water for guests and beach attendant was not happening.
Then their was the “renowned” restaurant on site, that was quiet and empty 90% of the time, because it also had possibly a “new owner” and had a cook that was not very good. The Tastee diner in Fairfax Virginia has better meals.
So the restaurant/bar would just close at different hours if they did not get enough reservations. You would walk to dinner, and find the place had closed for the evening or closed early. IF a dining spot posts hours, which they did, and you don’t expect it to find it shut.
That forced the small amount of us, who were in shock by day 2, to rent a car or call a cab and go out for dinners. Then there was the fine hotel security, they boasted in their ads of having.
One night as several of us came back by cab at 10pm after dinner, hardly a late hour, the outdoor lights were mainly out ( I guess to save money) so as we were walking to our rooms, in the dark, this tall image emerges on the sidewalk, yelling at us to halt. We were in shock.
Since he was wearing a tee shirt, rumpled shorts,and bare feet, how were we supposed to know he was the security guard, much less the entire hotel security force.
He turned out to be from Jamaica or Haiti, and lived at night on the site, mainly because so much of the construction supplies were getting stolen. How he could think 4 older ladies, dressed up, were a security threat, I am not sure.
Our maid told us they should have just closed the hotel down for a year and fixed it up right, instead of trying to have guests, (so they could get some room revenue) She said, guests love the beach, but they are in shock about the quality of the hotel, and keep saying, it sounded so great on Trip Advisor.
So I asked a couple of the local hotel General Managers and owners, and I was amazed at their answers. They said the guy has his friends and relatives in the States and the UK (which make up about 80% of the travelers to this island) write good letters about the place.
I replied, you mean hotel owners and executive managers actually have old friends and relatives write positive reviews, when they have NEVER even stayed theres.
They laughed, and said, you with all your world travels over the years, are naive about the abuses online, there are no laws or rules that are really enforced on these websites, we do the same thing.
I was in shock, as many of these people had 4 and 5 star properties, why would they need to do that. Simple they said, the ratings on these sites, like trip advisor. The public believes all these comments and ratings, and a dump can be rated number one for a while, if the owner gets enough high ratings, then our hotel gets down in ratings and the public does not book us as much.
So we all engage in having postive comments written by friends and relatives, they don’t publish any full names or addresses about the “travelers” commenting and they don’t ever seem to check on any comment, positive, or negative. It goes up.
One GM who does run a fine property highly rated, said, for a while when all these internet advisor sites came on the scene, most comments were from REAL travelers, but just like anything else, there are a few slippery owners or managers, and when owners found out, they could have friends writing high comments about their hotel, and nobody stopped them, this started the fake reviews, and it is wide spread now.
While I can appreciate trip advisor, and many other sites like it, I really don’t see trip advisor or any site doing one darn thing about checking up on the validity of comments and removing hotels. It would cost them too much money.
Well, Beth, I would rather rely on tripadvisor, than a travel agent that has to guess at what I would enjoy.
TripAdvisor owned by Expedia? Isn’t Expedia a travel agency? Doesn’t that make the whole thing a crock of shit? Should a travel agency which makes its money from people booking hotels and airlines be the owner of a travel review site that claims to be unbiased? If this is the future of social media, social media is dead.