Problem I have with TA - and any rating site really - is the people who have a specific situation that 99.5% of other guests won't encounter. But due to that 1 situation they give it a 1 star. Something like "I booked 2 rooms and was promised the 2 rooms would be next to each other. I checked in and the rooms are actually 5 doors from each other and the front desk refused to do anythng about it. This is the worst hotel ever!!!!!!!!" As stupid a reason that is to give the hotel a 1*, it gets factored in the average.

duplicate - please remove

I wrote a review that was not very enthusiastic. The manager of the property got back to me via Tripadvisor's message system. He offered me a significant cash value gift card to delete my review. There are a few ethical issues here, not the least of which is how Tripadvisor doesn't really have a way to patrol their site. It's an interesting tactic on and it probably has worked from what I see in the reviews of that property. Most of the negative or neutral reviews are recent. I wonder how long before they will be deleted.

Those who patron hotels through tour packages could post a review. Value paid for maybe convoluted, but what's stopping customers from posting reviews on Trip Advisor?

Did you take the money and delete your Trip Advisor review? Interesting to leave it up to others to negatively review in the future.

This tactic shows that Trip Advisor is big business. Surprising. That the manager would contact customers and offer cash incentives to delete a review.

I didn't take the offer. TripAdvisor has rules against it but no way to enforce them. My advice is that you can trust bad reviews on TA but not good ones.

You can't automatically trust bad reviews either.

Specific case is a very negative review written by a guy about IHG Le Moana in Bora Bora. He was there at the exact time as us, and he wrote so many lies about the property, it was clear he had an axe to grind.
Trip advisor removed it because the manager could prove he lied. When it was taken down, he wrote a second, slightly amended review.
Removed again.
You would think he would give up. Nope. Third and fourth review followed. I believe the fourth version is still posted, but his one star review still is a crock.

You should have taken the money. You cannot remove a review yourself, it needs to go through Tripadvisor, and they have to approve it. If they have any inkling of coercion, they will not approve removal. See my previous posts about this for my experience as a hotelier trying to get false reports removed.

True; there are a number of cases of competitors bad mouthing the competition.

It's amazing to me that with the number of actual reports from FTers about companies trying to manipulate reviews that anyone would still believe that Tripadvisor is reliable.

Currently planning a US vacation and encountering this quite a lot.
The owners must despair!

Ignoring 'fake' reviews it's all rather relative.

When I was in Malaysia last year one cheap place we stayed in had a leaky AC and some incredibly noisy guests early in the morning both nights. Wasn't annoyed enough to complain as we were leaving anyway but didn't feel it would be appropriate to give less than 3 stars because I hadn't given the staff an opportunity to make amends.

If I'd gone and spoken with them and they'd been polite, apologised and offered us one night free then I'd probably have given 4 stars. If I'd gone down and they'd handled it poorly or terribly then it could have been 2 stars or even 1 star.

So yes, the rooms next to each other example may seem trivial. However if everything else was fine, but they screwed that up AND refused to do anything and were rude when we raised it with them it could easily turn what would otherwise be a 5* review from me into a 3* review.

- - -
On the more general issue of trusting reviews. Tripadvisor etc know this is an issue and that's why they want to integrate things like Facebook. If I'm looking at reviews then I'll trust friends and friends of friends far more than some random stranger.

I also like seeing management follow-up in general.

In some cases, management replies are clearly spin to give the appearance of paying attention. For example, if (non-trivial and detailed) concerns are always followed up with a cut-and-paste "We regret that your stay did not meet your expectations. We hope that you will give us an opportunity to serve you in the future," then management may as well not even follow up.

On the other hand, if the response is equally specific - "We apologize for the plumbing issue you had. Due to the cold, a pipe had been damaged earlier in the day. It was fixed by 9pm and we have taken steps to make sure the pipe will not be damaged again. ..." then I am reasonably sure that management is actually responsive and not just playing the social media game.

+1

I am really impressed when the management response gives instructions on contacting hotel management directly to follow up on the issue.

I pay attention to number of reviews, and the distribution of the reviews. If a property has 2000 reviews and 85% are 4 or 5 stars, that states something.

Also, I pay attention to the author's activity, how many reviews, countries, etc.

This just amused me. I went to a casino in Pittsburgh yesterday that I was really impressed by. So I went to review it and the reviews are utterly hilariously stupid and stupidly hilarious. Like:

And

It's a freaking casino! People come there to drink and smoke and lose money!

CMK10, well, for myself I would expect that at least the Non-Smoking section of a casino would indeed be, well, smoke-free. And if the ventilation system indeed is working badly, then I do think this comment is very well allowed.

The first one made me chuckle, though :D