I've posted the occasional review on TA. A recent stay in Phuket got me a bit pissed off, so I made sure that every place I stayed at (good or bad), was reported on.

Certainly don't take high rankings as gospel. It is easy to spot all the 1 or 2 report people, who are only gushing about stuff, and discount them.

Hey now, no reason to crack on travelers from Provo...

Everyone regardless of their travel experience should have a platform to express their opinons openly and honestly. You had your first travel experience too you know.

50,000 reviews which state: "OMG we had our wedding/honeymoon here and it was just the BEST!!!! My new hubby and I had an awesome time and everything was super and everyone was so super nice@!!"

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...smile_dead.gifhttp://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...ile_tongue.gif

Aloha Emma:
Thank you for taking the time to think through the problems of enforcement.

My posts relate only to bogus “hotel” reviews, so I was not considering “restaurant” receipts. And, I was simply suggesting that TA could ask for proof only in the case where a hotel review is flagged as suspicious – not with every single review. Employers and tax authorities require such proof, so hotels and travelers are already accustomed to this. TA could notify the reviewer that his/her hotel review has been flagged and thereby requests proof of the stay. Failure to respond with acceptable proof would cause the review to be deleted. Fraudulent proof of stay would result in suspension of the reviewer’s account plus trigger an audit of the hotel. If I were designing such a system, the requests would be automated and would be handled in steps such as:
1) request hotel receipt,
2) after reply is received, ask for credit card billing detail to support the receipt,
3) after billing detail received, ask for proof of travel i.e. airline ticket. The goal being to make suspected fraud a zero-sum-game where the reviewer gives up and the review database quality is improved. Flagging might require multiple complaints as is done at craigslist and the suspicious reviews could be filtered into a viewable category that does not count on scores as is done at Yelp.

As you say, people will still attempt fakery and TA will undoubtedly be fooled some of the time, especially since TA must allow the reviewers to remain anonymous and delete personal information from receipts. However, TA must do something other than censor comments regarding fraudulent reviews and they must also quit “shooting the messenger”. Perhaps solutions for the problem of bogus hotel reviews will trickle down to the restaurants. In my opinion, a fake restaurant review might ruin a reader’s meal; but a bogus hotel review might ruin an entire trip.

My apologies to Provo. ;)

You are correct, that I had a first international travel experience (oooooh so many years ago :eek:) And if TA had been around I would have gushed about the hotel I stayed in. I now realize it wasn't a gush-worthy property. All those travelers I might have led astray!

Does anyone have a suggestion for what I should do about my existing reviews at TripAdvisor (plus a bunch of pending reviews from our recent round-the-world trip)? I've had nearly 20,000 readers, so they have been helpful to others and not just my own pride of authorship. I suppose I can simply copy them to Google Plus and Yelp. Thanks.

I usually post my review here on FT as well as TA. I put them in the hotels individual review locations. Yelp seems to be gaining steam so that is an option but I only post my reviews to places that I actually use a lot and get info from. The problem is though.....if you are posting a review from lets say2008 then it simply is not timely and can be skew things a bit from the readers perspective.

Thanks for your ideas; I will look into them. I like what you say about the hotels individual sites and will do that for chains like Marriott. Our favorites are boutique hotels, so I'll need another approach. I suppose I could Google some of my favorite spots and see what other review sites pop up and then post there. It might be beneficial to the establishments plus the readers. All my reviews are in the last 24 months and most are within in the last 12.

In order:

No one requires my receipts for when I stay in a hotel - I pay for it, and provided I get my loyalty points, that's it. I couldn't begin to even guess if I have a receipt for my last hotel only stay - I suspect it went in the bin along with the boarding pass when I got home. I have enough paper in my house without keeping unnecessary items.

I don't believe TA has ANY right to audit a hotel - would you let someone unaffiliated with your business have full access to your financials - I sure as hell wouldn't!

1. My 'receipt' for my hotel is a piece of paper from a travel agent, for a vacation - there isn't an amount of money on the same page as a hotel name.

2. There is no way I would send my credit card details to some TA processing centre in goodness only knows where. I don't give a copy of my credit card bills to my own company without ALL information blacked out (name, address, card number, etc etc.) and I trust them about as much as I trust anyone.

3. I would say I travel to a hotel by other means of transport more often than I fly. I might drive, I might take the train for which I have an annual pass.

I wouldn't let my real name (and the identifying information) go to TA nevermind beyond that. Imagine, you slate a hotel, and they find out you are someone in their loyalty program, bye bye upgrades, good treatments etc! Or imagine you stay on a corporate rate, and suddenly your firm rates go up because they identify you with a bad reivew.

In terms of faking I wouldn't even try and fake something like a Hilton receipt, but I may well do a print out of 'Joe Bloggs Travel Inc.' with an amount paid etc. How on earth do you expect trip advisor to keep track of one-man-band travel agents?

How far do you want to go - must someone 'prove' they ate in the hotel restaurant if they say the food is 'fantastic'? What about if they call the pool great, how do they prove they ever swam in it? It might be 'great' (pretty as viewed from their room) but otherwise lousy (too cold, broken tiles).

Perhaps the word audit was a poor choice. I was not referring to financials, rather just triggering an examination of the hotels other reviews on TA in the case of one or more suspicious ones. If a member has had his contribution flagged as suspicious (by more than X readers), I believe TA has a duty to ask for more details. If the member is unable or unwilling (you seem to be a bit of both), then TA certainly has the right to delete the review or place it in a category that does not affect ranking.

I don't disagree with the need for anonymity and privacy, so the rest of your comments don't require my response. TA needs to find a solution to the major problem of fraudulent reviews and we are lucky to be able to discuss it on this open forum.

But by that token, all a competitor would have to do would be write fake glowing reports, and that target hotel would be 'audited' by TA and potentially genuine ones taken away (if people don't want to or cannot provide proof) Sounds very open to abuse - ditto the more than X complaints about fake reviews, very easy to have multiple accounts / other people flag things as fake triggering a review. Voila, all the 5 star, excellent reports are flagged as fake, users refuse to send personal details, and that hotel slides down the rankings, allowing the sneaky competitor to move into top spot.

My only experience is with one hotel faking positive TA reviews in order to counteract their negative, but true, reviews. It is possible that a competitor might attempt to sabotage another hotel, but I've never heard of it. Of course, I've read that some hotels claim competitive sabotage but believe it is only a convenient way to explain away large numbers of negative reviews. As others have said here, it is fairly easy to spot suspicious reviews (both positive and negative). The most important point to consider on the topic of fraudulent reviews, is that TA completely censors this kind of discussion. I might not agree with you, but I am glad that FlyerTalk does not censor you. Hopefully, analysts at TA will discover this uncensored thread and consider all comments when designing a solution.

I understand what you are saying, and I agree, I don't think most hotels take part in sabotage, but if you change the rules e.g. If 5 people flag a review as potentially fake, and receipts required to verify (which I think most people won't submit - confidentiality, plus 'can't be bothered' it is going to be very easy for some to deep six positive competitor reviews.

The other factor is that TA is a forum, some people post reviews to help others, to have a rant, to thank staff but ultimately, very few people actually care that much, and of you make it harder, people just won't bother anymore. Better, IMO to have 100 reviews, 3 of which may be fake, than to have 10 verified reviews. And TA know this - quantity over quality wins hands down.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I wouldn't propose anything to make it harder to submit a review. Using your example of 100 reviews, 3 of which are suspicious - I'm only suggesting that TA should review just the 3 suspects. Even if only 1 of the 3 is later removed, it improves the quality and makes people aware of TA's diligence.

In spite of comments to the contrary posted here, I'm unaware if TA takes any real action on reviews flagged as suspicious. If anyone has information about this, it would be helpful to know i.e. if TA has ever contacted you asking for more details. As I keep reiterating, TA censors all discussion so this board is probably the only public source of information.

I understand, but i am thinking what the implications would be. Genuine review flagged, either someone genuinely suspicious or through malice, poster not prepared to give receipts, thus poster never bothers submitting a review because of their negative experience. Magnify that many times, equals less reviewers, less reviews. Word gets out not to bother wasting your time, reviews diminish, combined with the genuine posts maliciously flagged (positive and negative) that people are not able to / prepared to provide evidence for and suddenly you have the 10 mediocre middle of the road instead of the 100 full spectrum reviews.