Originally Posted by
alanw
A couple of years ago I had been staying frequently at a wonderful hotel in Santa Monica and the girl at the desk mentioned that the owner was paying them bonuses for good reviews on TA. For me, it's easily the best hotel value in LA so I was happy to write a positive review. And I got a suite every week after that for quite some time.
The bad part is that in the last year they have been full every single time I've tried to book. I guess the success was my fault. Maybe I should start writing horror stories on TA so I can finally get a room there again...
Edited to add: I just popped over to TA to have a look and I see they're the #1 hotel now.
Now here's an interesting twist. A week after I posted this, I got an email from TripAdvisor asking me to confirm that I'm the author of the review I mention above, and telling me that by clicking their verification link I was solemnly swearing to several paragraphs worth of heavy-sounding quasi-legalese about whether I had actually stayed there, and actually interacted with them as a customer, and these were my true feelings, and my final answer, etc., otherwise my review would be deleted. Of course my review did accurately reflect my experiences with the hotel, so I went ahead and confirmed.
IMO the timing is very interesting, if not suspect. Their mail assured me that it was nothing I did, and it wasn't just me. It's only that from time to time, completely at random, they need to check the veracity of two-year-old reviews that were positive but not over the top and completely inline with those of most other reviewers.
What do you think prompted this?
1. Completely at random, just like they said
2. TripAdvisor has someone trolling through FT looking for signs of review funny business
3. Some busybody on FT thought they had found a possible reason to scamper over to TA and tattle.
4. Other