User generated content and Hotel review sites
November 15th, 2006
The Sunday Times has entered the ongoing debate concerning false reviews found on hotel review websites and follows an article published earlier this year in the New York Times. In recent years, travellers have switched their attention from printed guides compiled by professional inspectors to the numerous user reviews that can be found on a burgeoning number of hotel review sites. It is no surprise that investigations found hotel owners inflating their ratings, with the most blatant giving themselves glowing reviews. The Sunday Times article did not point out that the problem affects all types of rating/review sites – a recent example being speculation that a London PR firm has rigged the YouTube system to get listed on the ‘Most Subscribed to’ page.
The success of hospitality review sites have created their own problems. Trip Advisor has over five million reviews and moderating such a high number is no easy task. Trip Advisor claims that all the reviews are read but how can they determine if a review is fake or not? The Sunday Times reporters submitted extremely favourable reviews to hotels that had previously been scored consistently poorly. These reviews were published, and in one instance a London hotel review score was increased from 1.2 to 4.2 with the addition of four favourable reviews.
As the number of reviews continues to increase and hotels discover and adopt tactics to improve their ranking, the hotel review sites will need to adopt strategies to protect the validity of their, albeit user-generated content. I’m not aware of current strategies in place and it is a fine balance, but I’m sure reviews that are submitted that contradict previous ones markedly could be flagged for further investigation. The New York Times article writes that Trip Advisor were involved in the creation of a fraud detection algorithm. Perhaps each newly-placed rating could be cross checked against the number and score of previous ratings for a particular hotel. Other factors could also be taken into account, such as the reviewer’s history of contributions.
For example, if a user appears to negatively review hotels in a localised area then this should be easier to detect than a user who creates a separate identity for each review. Perhaps, Trip Advisor could distinguish certain reviewers that post regularly, in a similar vein that Amazon highlights ‘top’ reviewers that could aid users to attribute weight to reviews. According to a discussion between Travolution and The Sunday Times, the latter believes Trip Advisor’s ‘processes to catch persistent hoax reviews does work – it is the single bogus reviews that are ones more difficult to catch.’
As these sites continue to tackle the issue of bogus reviews and any erosion of user trust, you’d hope reviews and ratings play one part in the user’s decision-making process and that where ratings are numerous, it is more likely any scam reviews would be drowned out in a sea of common consensus from authentic reviewers. The temptation for hoteliers to work the system will not go away but on the flipside there is a risk of having reviews removed, an increase in disappointed and duped customers and of course the moral case for misleading site visitors.
There are plenty of highly charged comments, and some amusing, at the bottom of both The Sunday Times article and the story picked up by the Scotsman!
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November 15th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
The user generated model was extremely popular when it first emerged, primarily because people were excited to have up-to-the-minute content. It was a big influencer in travel decisions because people always look for ‘word of mouth’ recommendations and were more likely to try things that they previously hadn’t heard about. The problem now is that the internet is flooded with travel content which, for the most part, is irrelevant and unsubstantiated. It’s fun to read someone’s travel blog, but you rarely get enough information and detail to make informed travel plans.
The user-generated sites such as Tripadvisor are now being abused, hotel owners and tour guides are getting on these sites to tout their own places and bash their competition. I’ve heard too many stories of people choosing the cheaper, more adventurous option they found on a forum, only to arrive at their destination and find they were mis-led. This happened to some friends recently with their holiday to hike the Inca Trail. The online recommendation they received was fraudulent and they were stuck in Cusco for a week without a permit or guide to hike the trail. Further, it’s hard to tell whether the person writing a review is someone who you would want to take advice from. For example, if someone whose only travel experience has been a 1-week stay at a low-end all inclusive resort in Mexico recommends a pousada in Brazil to me, I’m not likely to give that recommendation too much weight.
I think the inflection point has been hit where people are going to revert to less mass-market options, simply because they don’t have time to filter through the information and find what is relevant to them. There are a number of sites that have niche focuses or blogs geared to a specific demographic that highlight relevant areas or service providers of interest to that market. I think these will be the real travel influencers because they can bring the experience directly to their audience through content, video, podcasts, etc.
November 16th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
Great points Jen!
I agree with a lot of what you say. I’m not a heavy user of hospitality review sites but I did use Trip Advisor to search for hotels during a recent stay in Bristol. In this instance the hotels in my search did have a number of positive user reviews which meant that I did treat them with a smaller pinch of salt.
The reviews were one element that did help me, of equal importance was the ability to refine my search, and the accompanying photos, forums and ‘goLists’. Although, I do think I’d be more hesitant about relying on recommendations for longer travels further afield!
August 11th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
In fact we have implemented a system that only allows users that have booked direct with the accommodation to add reviews to our travel portal.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Cheers Chris, will take a look
August 26th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Sorry, I should have said we allow any reviews but give priorty to users that have booked themselves and are highlighted with the adjacent ‘OFFICIAL REVIEW’ logo.