The Trouble With TripAdvisor
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The Trouble With TripAdvisor
There are good reasons not to trust crowdsourced sites.
Posted Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 2:40pm
If you’ve searched online for a hotel recently, chances are you’ve stumbled upon TripAdvisor, the hotel review Web site. TripAdvisor ranks hotels according to crowdsourced feedback. Anyone can go to the site to rave or rant about a stay in a particular hotel. If the toilets at a certain hotel don’t flush, you can let the world know on TripAdvisor. If you’re charged extra for bacon with your breakfast or the toast is not warm enough to melt butter, you can warn other travelers to steer clear. Or if you had a wonderful stay somewhere, you can write about it in glowing detail. In fact, most of the reviews on TripAdvisor are positive.
When it popped up in 2000, TripAdvisor recognized a huge information gap between travelers and hotels. Hotel Web sites only showcased flattering pictures and sometimes too-good-to-be-true descriptions. Travel agents were expensive. And traditional hotel rating systems—typified by stars and diamonds—were widely recognizable, but few people really understood what they meant. (Most people still don’t.) TripAdvisor positioned itself as the go-to spot for straightforward and detached criticism courtesy of the traveling masses. Like Yelp and Wikipedia, TripAdvisor eschews institutional expertise in favor of the wisdom of crowds. All three Web sites flourished and grew because the public deemed them useful, and as more people used them, their authority grew.
TripAdvisor, now owned by Expedia (EXPE), took off, but—perhaps thanks to its high profile—it’s becoming yet another case study in crowdsourcing headaches. Just as people have been nabbed editing their own Wikipedia profiles, inflating their Amazon (AMZN) book rankings, and Yelp-ing false reviews about rival pizza shops, there are people who manipulate their popularity on TripAdvisor. Obviously, it’s the hotels that have the most to gain or lose from high or low ratings. They’d be foolish to ignore the site—which gets 36 million monthly visitors—and, some may say, foolish not to do what they can to improve their rankings. This past summer, TripAdvisor admitted that it was having trouble with hotel staffers posting reviews of their own properties. The company assured everyone that it has a dedicated staff who can sniff out fishy posts. It also slaps a red warning label on the profiles of any properties that it suspects have manipulated their own reviews.
Still, there’s not much that TripAdvisor can do to guarantee its credibility. Because reviewers can be anonymous, it’s not difficult for a crafty hotel marketing officer to commission underlings to post positive reviews of a property on the site. Or they can ask family and friends to do so. TripAdvisor’s top-ranked property in Miami Beach right now is a boutique hotel called the Betsy. It beat out 195 other reviewed properties for the top spot. But as one TripAdvisor reviewer points out, “I would note that we were told when we checked in that we were some of the first paying guests as march and April they had been trialling with friends and guests of the owners etc. This possibly explains why none of the reviews posted so far mentions the fact that the hotel is not completed.” The hotel management responded to this post defensively, claiming that all reviews came after this trial period, implying that friends and family had not written them. That may well be true, but, frustratingly, there’s no way for TripAdvisor readers to know who to trust. There’s also no built-in mechanism to make sure reviewers of a certain hotel have actually stayed there, which welcomes even sneakier ploys—including, apparently, reviews for hire. This now-expired job posting on Scriptlance.com, a freelance job board, offers cash for 100 TripAdvisor reviews of a certain hotel.
Crowdsourcing enthusiasts might claim that TripAdvisor’s value isn’t diminished by nefarious hotel marketers because their voices are ultimately drowned out by the rest of the community. But it seems like the rest of the industry isn’t so sure. Recently, Forbes took over licensing of Mobil Travel Guide’s old-school star rating guide and says it has plans to expand it. Oyster, a travel review Web site launched this summer, employs journalists trained as hotel critics to write reviews. Both ventures are betting that the final say on which hotels are best should fall to answerable professionals—who, before TripAdvisor, had always played that role. The pendulum seems to be swinging back that way, perhaps for good. Even if TripAdvisor is able to weed out self-promoters, a fundamental question remains: Are the rest of the 30 million reviews worth reading? That, of course, depends on who you ask.
Comments
Totally agree with this article!
I totally agree with this article as I trusted TA reviews on a group of resorts in Mexico which their main goal is to sell timeshare/memberships. I realized after my stay that I should have read the poor and terrible which stated mostly the same problems I experienced. I suggest to folks out there to do the same and read the bad reviews as the resorts (and sharks) are not going to post anything bad. You can weed out the whiners who complain of silly things like the weather being bad or no beach as that has nothing to do with the resorts/hotels.
I also agree that professional people who have a lot of experience in travelling and hotel stays should be writing reviews and begin advertising their websites it to help consumers choose their vacation more wisely.
Useful but VERY flawed
We own and run a relatively small hotel on the West Coast of Scotland, I use TripAdvisor when we choose an hotel, therefore quite simply - I can see both sides of the coin.
But PLEASE can someone tell me where can I go if I want to complain about a shop, bank, doctor, dentist, lawyer, gym - or any other business?
And I dont mean through some official ombudsman, I mean, where publicly can I say what I want about a rude shop keeper, an incapable lawyer or a bank that just isn’t up to the mark? Can I say what I want (sometimes on a very personal basis) about anyone?
The answer is a definite NO! And rightly so, because it is called libel unless I can prove it.
On TripAdvisor, a person can pretty well say what they like, truth or lies, it has happened to us and its terrible, almost all of our reviews are really fantastic, but a couple state really horrible and personal remarks.
Our business is not only a business, it is a very much loved home, we work incredibly hard to give each guest a great level of quality whilst they stay, how would you feel if a person then leaves (saying absolutely nothing about some small aspect of their experience) and then slates you publicly and quite dishonestly.
How would you feel if you were slated in a review by a person who had never in fact stayed, and trip advisor knew this but refused to remove the review?
How would you feel if your national dress was mocked publicly on a website and you made the obvious comparison that if this was an Indian wearing a turban comment it would not be publishable, but this site still refused to remove what we feel was a racist and offensive (a bad taste joke) comment.
Bizarrely, we are currently in contact with them because as an hotel (top end 4 stars with our tourist board and clearly stated on our website) they are telling us that unless we provide certain criteria, which by the way we are not required to do with any proper and official grading system) they will not categorise us a hotel, it is ridiculous as that is what we are - the things they want us to prove we provide are all listed on our website but they want us to send a copy of our official grading to them or else we have to remain a bed and breakfast! Nothing wrong with bed and breakfast establishments, but that is not what we are.
Who or what do they think they are? And more disturbingly, who gives them that right?
This site is massively flawed because it does not give the names of the contributors, it does not give the public a right to respond like most other blog type sites and it does not check its facts properly. It also allows others to gripe and libel an establishment and it suggests that hotels are its only search results, its states a search option for 'city' only when in fact in should state 'location' and it states 'find a hotel' when it should in fact state 'find accommodation' or split the accommodation types.
I would so welcome any other hotelier who feels as I do to contact me directly as I intend to take this whole matter through every channel to try and expose them for what they are - Perpetrators of lies with no professional status.
TA offers the same
TA offers the same opportunity of when you speak to a fellow traveller in a lounge, terminal, or in transit, about a hotel, restaurant, city, area. You may not be able to vouch for this person or call him/her your brother, but at least he offers a new angle. Almost never can you tell the full range around a hotel by the hotel's photos or advice. TA allows visitors to comment on the location, security, etc. so at least a traveller has an alternative viewpoint besides the biased hotel. As well, one can better gauge prices for things, rather than appear to be the buffoonish Westerner throwing money around.
The consumer is perpetually bombarded and overcome by marketting and corporate interests in the West. Every venue and mechanism that enables consumers to be empowered against the billion dollar onslaught is a plus for everyone.
common sense
When a location is given only glowing review check out the people who are giving them. I worked for a restaurant group where the marketing director would go on to every ratings website and only comment on her restuarants. So you could tell something was was up. People who give short non descript answers are most likely not real guests.
Rooms for sale
It's common practice for my hotel company to offer discounted room rates in exchange for the promise of writing Trip Advisor with a positive review. Is the good review actually a lie? Maybe not. But it's definitely bought and paid for so not really to be trusted.
Like others have said--you
Like others have said--you shouldn't take every word of every review of TripAdvisor as gospel. I doubt that most of us do. But it's not hard to figure out which reviews I can safely discount--the cranky and demanding whiners, the overly-enthusiastic shills, the people whose tastes and priorities are just very different from mine. It's often possible to spot trends and frequent mentions of the same problems or positives. And Trip Advisor reviewers often point out things you'd never see on the hotel's official site, or think of asking beforehand--like the absence of an elevator, or the noise from the pub next door, or the difference between rooms in different parts of the building. That lets me either steer clear, or request something (a ground-floor room, a room on the back side of the building, etc.) that I wouldn't have known to ask for if I didn't have the benefit of someone else's experience.
I've found Trip Advisor really useful in planning my travels. It just takes a little discerning judgement and common sense to find the good information among the useless.
Trip Advisor
While trip advsior may get false reviews in major cities or resort areas, the item I like most about it is if I am going to a small town in middle America, I can usually find a review from someone that has visited the local motel. These reviews are usually accurate and informative. I have also used trip advisor for reviews for major hotels and I have not found too many discrepancies in these reviews. You can usually filter out the complainers and the promoters and determine a reasonable expected experience.
It's still useful
Can you trust every review on TA? Of course not, just like you can't assume the people posting here to defend it don't work for Expedia.
I agree with many of the other posters. You have to take the whole of each property's listing, over time, to get a sense of it, then check other sources. Most of the time, I've been pleased with the properties I've booked after checking them out using TA.
It's one more tool, and most of the time, it's a pretty good one.
Just use common sense
I use TripAdvisor frequently when searching out hotels, and have in turn posted reviews of places I've stayed. I tend to trust only balanced reviews which discuss the overall experience and point out the highs and lows. Any review that's nothing but overblown adulation or a laundry list of "I'm gonna sue!" complaints is ignored (unless other, more balanced reviews echo similar praise or complaints).
Caseda, I hope you reported your suspicions to the TripAdvisor staff. Despite their claims, they aren't quite omniscient!
Tripadvisor Is Very Helpful
I disagree with this essay entirely.
I've used Tripadvisor 5-6 times a year since 2002 to choose hotels and I have never made what I consider to be a bad choice based on the information I found on the site.
I also post reviews. Most of my reviews are positive because I based my stay on the positive reviews of others. Nothing nefarious here.
The challenge with using Tripadvisor is that reviewers don't apply the same criteria when evaluating a hotel.
I evaluate based on (1) location, (2) cleanliness and security, and (3) general style and aesthetics. (2) is absolute in every case, but (1) and (3) are subjective. I have to evaluate (1) and (3) in the context of the reason for my trip. (1) and (3) are also the most influential on budget.
Other reviewers are (more) concerned about service. I would never knock a hotel for bad service alone. Maybe the maid was having a bad day. She's 1 employee of potentially 100s at a hotel. Maybe she's already been fired.
I wish Tripadvisor would allow you to search based on criteria other than city and price, but you can easily work around this limitation.
Tips for Using Tripadvisor Successfully:
Remember the purpose of your trip and your budget and other subjective criteria.
Read a handful of _recent_ reviews. Reviews from last year are out of date on everything but location.
Do the reviewers seem to share your criteria? If not, you don't really care how they grade the hotel, since you don't share their standards.
Make sure to read both the very positive reviews and the very negative ones.
Check review claims against the hotel's web site, Google maps (re: location), Fodor's, and common sense.
If a poster allows you to email, do so. I have emailed and been emailed. Most posters are happy to round out their reviews upon request.
With everything: caveat emptor. With hotels, with Tripadvisor, with rivals, with this essay...