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Fake travel reviews: how common?
Even influential TripAdvisor, the third most popular travel information site last June with about 9.2 million visitors, has a problem with fake reviews, say industry experts.
But the site says their red disclaimers used since 2006 involve only a small fraction of the 400,000 hotels reviewed. The Newton, Mass-based company says it has a successful system to root out inaccurate or deliberately placed reviews.
“The 23 million reviews and opinions are authentic and they’re unbiased and they’re from real users,” spokesman Brooke Ferencsik told the AP. “The vast majority of hoteliers, they understand the risk to their business and their reputation if they attempt to post fraudulent information.”
TripAdvisor, part of Expedia, ranks hotels according to how well they have been reviewed. Many loyal users rate it the best place to find all types of accommodations.
But recently, travel web sites and blogs have started questioning the red warnings, which read:
"TripAdvisor has reasonable cause to believe 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.”
One web site, BeatOfHawaii.com, said it found 92 hotels with that label in June. The disclaimers drew a lot of attention and most were removed, with only 16 left.
The disclaimers have an expiration date that varies with each hotel, Ferencsik said. He said TripAdvisor works with hotel owners to get the warnings removed, sometimes after hoteliers promise to stop breaking the site’s rules.
“Not only does it give our travelers fair warning, but also it should be a deterrent for any property that’s thinking about trying to game the system,” he said.
The company has policies to weed out suspicious reviews, screens reviews before they are posted and uses automated tools to identify attempts to beat the system, the spokesman said.
But experts still the policies are not always public. They also say manipulated reviews can be overly positive, or can be extremely negative (sometimes by competitor reviews). Some experts such as Arthur Frommer urge consumers to rely on the advice of professionals or experts such as travel writers and authors of guidebooks.
By David Wilkening
David
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