I was just looking at restaurants in bali and came across this... made me giggle.


"What drew me in to the restaurant was the girls and grilled meat section."

I was told by a Sofitel hotel if I took down my review they would refund 2 nights from my atrocious 5 night stay.

Filter out biased reviews
 

https://www.fakespot.com/ seems to be useful to filter out biased reviews.

I just tried it on a couple of TA properties where I had done my own analysis. Looks very promising.

Great find!

I'm a level 6 on TA but I think I will stop contributing.
Any time you give a negative review to a property or a restaurant they can respond with any BS they like and you have no ability to refute what they say.
A recent poor restaurant review in Huatulco MX was met with a response from the restaurant owner/manager that was a complete fabrication, and I have no ability to rebutt their BS.

I'm surprised to see people still debating the issue of review sites, whether TA or any other. None of them have been reliable for years.

If you still need convincing as to just how unreliable TA et all are, just read about the guy who invented a London, England restaurant and had it become the #1 TA choice!

https://www.google.ca/search?rlz=1C1....0.OkyCSwlFRck

I find the food photos he used particularly amusing. Imagine one of those round deodorizer 'cakes' that you see in a men's urinal sometimes, disguised as a fudge brownie with some shaving cream on top. He even had a top food critic trying to make a reservation. You gotta admire the guy's inventiveness and imagination though.

Nowadays, there is an entire industry generating fake reviews on every kind of review site. Here is an example of a company that will happily post positive reviews: https://reviewsthatstick.com/

And for video reviews, here is a woman who will not only post positive reviews for a business but will happily dress up and lie about her background to increase the likelyhood of the viewer believing her.
Prolific video testimonial creator says there's 'nothing wrong' with selling reviews - Business - CBC News Watch the little sample video clip, very enlightening.

The only reviews you can rely on are those given by people you know and trust.

I don't really take TA as the gospel truth to begin with .... I use it to help form a general impression of the place, see photos taken by guests, that sort of thing. I find it to still be a very useful tool for that purpose.

I post a lot of Yelp reviews but only a few on TripAdvisor. Other than hopefully helping out strangers, I don't quite know what the benefit to posting is. At least Yelp has "elite" status that gets you invites to some events. But I am grateful for reviews of some of the properties that most Flyertalkers wouldn't ever consider let alone review.

Same here.

it's a tool. 1 tool.

how it's used is up to the operator, not a fault of the tool.

I agree Deniiah and I believe it is being used by the unsuspecting. Trip Adviser with its many underlying corporations that govern it are nor providing services to actually care about the clientele (whomever they are). But yes many people do not care as much about where they are going nor where they are staying. But they will give a quick nod to a site like TA and possibly say "OK" we go here. I actually heard some tourists at the airport here say "what hotel are we going to" as they looked for a transport bus at the airport patking lot.

What I do not understand is why you quit writing reviews when you noticed fake ones? A LOT of people are fully aware of how to spot fake reviews, and appreciate ones that are not. Just because of some bad apples, why are you giving up? Anyone who has been around TA any length of time know enough not to take every review as gospel, but learn over time how to spot fake, or even just one off reviews from a single angry incidence.

As with all things, TripAdvisor is a tool that has its positives and negatives--not unlike FlyerTalk.

Anyone who relies on TripAdvisor rankings to decide between hotels or restaurants is likely a fool. It's obvious that false reviews can impact those too easily.

That being said, I find TripAdvisor to be a powerful tool to get a better sense of a place and to get more information. Of course, I have rules:

(1) If a reviewer hasn't reviewed at least 20-25 other hotels or restaurants, I don't trust that hotel or restaurant review. I check.
(2) I check reviews overall AND for the specific timeframe I'll be there. Season and occupancy can make a big difference.
(3) I always message the reviewers for the top 5-10 reviews that seem to be particularly reliable and/or make me like or dislike a hotel. I always get a response--and that makes me feel much more confident in my estimations. That I always get a response makes me feel more comfortable with the way I evaluate reviews on TripAdvisor, too.
(4) I ignore any and all reviews from reviewers with only 1-5 reviews.
(5) I place a lot more stock in reviews whose reviewers have stayed at other hotels or dined at other restaurants I also know.

I find it very easy to get additional info (how is the air con?) and lots of great recommendations when I message the individual reviewers, too.

I utilize much of the above quite successfully. I also 'filter in' negative reviews for the past year as I generally find that the negative reviews are due to a very particular issue. Finally, I will check booking or hotels .com to cross-reference the reviews. Many writers on TA are good about responding to questions, and I do my best to reciprocate.

Here's how I deal with TA and other sites were reviews get posted.

I ignore them.

I have stopped posting on and checking TA and other sites about 6 months ago (after being a prolific reviewer) once I had a realization that probably 50% of what you read there is prefabricated BS from reputation management schemes, or stuff that was posted by kettles.

Why though ? Well, I only go to a bad place once. And my interpretation of what's bad, will be different than yours, and yours, and yours.....etc. YMMV............

TA sucks for specifics anymore but you can still get a good feel for a place by looking at it. Especially if there are a bunch of user uploaded pictures. Though anymore TA is something you can use to help you decide on where to stay, rather than being a one stop place to look like it was a few years ago.

The bigger the online content provider/facilitator becomes, the more the tendency to kiss up to the more powerful business and government interests. TripAdvisor and FT are a sign of that dynamic and it ends up being to the disadvantage of critical observers and contributors who would have previously relied upon what those content providers/facilities enabled in the travel space. It doesn’t make the space useless, just less useful if not downplaying expectations for such sites and adjusting how to process the content.

I agree, although to some extent, TA has been made at least partially obsolete by improved websites. 10-12 years ago many hotel websites were very rudimentary... fast forward to now and most have a huge assortment of photos that help you get a sense for what a hotel is all about.

Yes the websites have improved but also the degree to which customers in all sectors rely on peer feedback and reviews has gone up. Any open-sourced review system is liable to gaming, and it will always be an ongoing game of cat and mouse.

However what bothers me with TripAdvisor is not the hotels gaming the system but the degree to which TripAdvisor itself goes to delay, censor and block negative reviews. This puts an artificially positive bias on everything viewed there.

So there is no danger of it being obsolete. More like they have it so good that their greed to please the advertisers is what will kill them in the end.

+1 ... especially your comments about TA actively delaying/blocking negative feedback on businesses.

I find it valuable but the cost in my effort to properly vet and research places has really increased.

I know this is an old threat but just adding in that I, too, rely on TA while also trying to review hotels and restaurants as I travel. After more than 100 hotel reviews, I would think that my reviews no longer require close scrutiny. Most of my reviews go through and are posted within a day.
But I submitted a review 6 days ago that is still pending review. I can only guess that it's because I highlight a regulatory problem by the hotel, which would be hard to substantiate independently (I wish I took a photo of it). I can't tell if TA is worried about libel from posting ... or if TA is in the hotel's pocket. Either way, disappointing.

Don't trust Tripadvisor reviews
 

Hi,
Recently I booked a resort (outside US) for me and my extended family (wife, parents and in-laws). The reviews on Tripadvisors looked very promising and it shows the resort ranking 5th out of around 230 resorts and hotels in the area. However, our stay was horrible, the hotel was super dirty, and the manager was rude and so many other issues was really bad there.
I came back after taking punch of pictures on blood stains all over the curtains and sheets, molded bathroom curtain...etc and posted a negative review on tripadvisor. To my surprise only one dark unclear photo was posted under my review, though I am sure I had uploaded no less than 9 clear other photos! It is impossible anyways to add more photos or edit a review after it is posted. I thought it could be some kind of a glitch in their system to not upload all my other photos, so I deleted the review and re posted again with the same pictures except this very dark one. This morning, again, I found the review was approved, but they picked the relatively darker picture and posted it as the only picture! At this point it is very clear to me that they are trying to hide the truth.

Also I have tried to reach them through the feedback form on their site to tell them to inspect the fake other reviews, but their form has a glitch (on purpose?!) and after hitting the send button, nothing happen and my message never arrived them.
I tried to find a working email from them that receive messages, but all their emails are no-reply ones.
Just wanted to spread the word out, so those of you who trust their reviews may reconsider.

In the old days, it wasn't possible to book through tripadvisor, now that it has a conflict of interest and became a travel agent, I think they want their hotel partners to always look nicer than they are in reality. I think I would consider booking.com or google maps reviews as a more reliable sources "through they still act like a travel agent" in the future.

I had exactly the same situation in August! The hotel was recommended as the best. But my room was much less than on the site, there was no jacuzzi. The hotel manager refused to compensate the difference and behaved rudely.
I could not leave a negative review about the hotel in Tripadvisor. Same as you.

I've alerted a moderator to merge this with the main Tripadvisor thread. I'm surprised that you are surprised that TA is full of BS reviews. No serious traveller takes that site, well, seriously!

My trips are handled by a specialist of our company, but at that time I flew on my personal business. So I used the tripadvisor.
Surprise!

Any decent alternative?

For hotels, I've found lately that the hotel booking websites (e.g., Booking.com, Agoda, Hotels.com) are surprisingly okay, especially for hotels with a good number of reviews, since they generally only allow reviews from people who have actually booked through the websites and stayed at the properties in question. Out of curiosity, what's the resort you booked? I'd be curious to check it out on those sites to see if it also is well-rated there.

You also may have just gotten unlucky; it's not unheard of for hotels to get worse just because e.g., they're under new management that's just neglecting it and riding on the good press, so even without gaming the systems, the ratings are often out of whack

All review sites are full of BS reviews, with some real reviews scattered among them. I still use TA, and various other booking sites too, but I do so judiciously. Throw out the top and bottom 10%, and then consider.

I also submit real reviews to TA, to try to keep things balanced a little bit.

We could make our own rating app.
Stranger things have happened. See the history of Michelin Guide, which is, indeed, the same company as Michelin tires.

One in three TA reviews fake (?)
 

'One in three TripAdvisor reviews are fake,' with venues buying glowing reviews, investigation finds | Fox News

Byuing "bulk reviews": 10 for 69 GBP.

FlyerTalk doesn't have reviews of all the hotels of the world!!

I use fakespot for not just TripAdvisor, but for Amazon and yelp. I also, for TA, I skip the one time posters and read if the reviewer has over 10 - 15 other reviews, more or less.

First time to know that fakespot working with Tripadvisor! Thank you!

+1. Stopped using it yeons ago.

Something I just noticed, after having not used TA in some time: The review no longer initially displays the number of reviews by the poster and helpful votes. I'm sure that all of us have learned to particularly take reviews by one or two time posters with skepticism, especially if there are many in a row. Every iteration of TA makes it harder to use and easier to game.