TripAdvisor incidental information
 

I agree that the issues which have been raised are definitely problematic and seriously detract from TripAdvisor's usefulness, especially fake reviews.

But I still look at it before booking, especially in places I have not visited before to get the incidental information reviewers sometimes include. Often that is useful stuff and can't be found on hotel or travel agent websites. It can be of more interest to me than what ranking travelers gave the place or even whether they liked it or not. (I travel a lot in China; second and third tier cities.)

For example: (These are not actual quotes) No small restaurants or convenience stores nearby. Hard to find a taxi on that street. Across the road from a shopping mall. Noisy road construction out front where they are building a subway. Major hotel lobby renovation underway, don't accept a room on the lower floors. Airport shuttle bus stops right next door. Wretched breakfast, don't take the room rate that includes it, you can do better on your own just outside.

I could really not care less if someone gives a rave review of Sally in the nail salon or rants about Tom the lazy bellhop. Every now and then something useful turns up in the body of a review. I realize this has been said before; but what it means that TripAdvisor needs to be used in a different way. It is not an all-purpose tool.

I will add one funny one though.

When we were looking for a place to overnight for an early flight in Rome, several of the reviews of some of the airport properties included things like, quoting from one

There are packs of wild dogs near the hotel towards the bus stop so walking around is a "hazard" .

There were quite a few that mentioned it, we stayed in another area.

Raw information like this is absolutely useful.. and take one post with a grain of salt.. but with multiple posts accross the board about an idiosyncracie, will help make a better choice..

I've picked some real nice places to stay, on absolute deals (on my own research) through raw information presented on www.tripadvisor.com

I read the reviews with a grain of salt. I mostly read the bad reviews first. I've also written reviews of places I've visited and I write truthfully, assuming most others do, too. It's pretty obvious that some hotels/motels/inns ask others to write a good review, or they write them themselves.

We sold our B&B a few years ago. A few months later, I came across it on tripadvisor and read the very first review by a woman who we know and consider our friend. I knew she didn't write that review and asked her the next year when I saw her. She said she didn't, so that leaves just the new owner to have written it.

If theres only a few I don't trust the reviews, if it appears too good to be true I check sources. Still, it can be faked.

Yeah, I found the quote cordelli cited particularly disturbing because it mentioned "scenarios" you could include in the fake review order. I always look for details because many of the phony reviews are vague. Now I'll have to contend with comments like "Chef Maurice's lobster timbales finished with pineapple-wasabi glaze were to die for" and "I highly recommend the anti-jet lag massage in the Spa" in trying to figure out what to believe.

Did the new owner write the review in your friends name? Is that possible.:eek:

I find that new hotels will have sparse reviews.. and I tried a HIX in Houston that was brand spanking new, but not rated that highly..

Checking in, it was new everything, and we had fantastic stay.. on Pointsbreak 5,000 points per night.. awesome value..

Tripadvisor in with the shilling?
 

Well, I have to report our last experience w/TA, because it's truly egregious. We had to change a previous booking because of a last minute minute change in plans. There was an upcoming big convention in the city where we were staying, so we sort of booked blindly a place that was # 5 in TA's ranking (didn't have time to read all reviews in depth). Unfortunately, it was a complete dump (yes, we expected a budget place given the rate, but we had much better for similar rates, and the many drawbacks were not mentioned in most reviews). Later we read their reviews a bit carefully, and it appeared that most were shills. Also, while there, we encountered a guest "helping out" at the reception computer, typing away for long stretches.:rolleyes:

So, after we came home, we decided to post our review on TA. It wasn't complimentary, so the owners contacted us twice to try to convince us to retract it. The second time they contacted us, they actually did so from the account of one their earlier shills!!!

Armed with this evidence, we contacted TA (for the second time, I should say), and asked them to please expose this property as shilled. I figured we'd soon see their red warning box (has anyone ever seen that in reality?) on the hostel's page, but the only action TA has taken so far is to ERASE FROM OUR LIST THE MESSAGE THAT THE PROPERTY SENT FROM THE SHILLING ACCOUNT (we did make a screenshot, however). The dumpy hostel (definitely not a hotel) is still ranked in the top-ten and there is no red warning box.

Now, to me that means that shilling is absolutely tolerated at TA, perhaps even encouraged, because it creates additional "user-generated" material, and any post is a good post as long as it raises the numbers. :mad:

I now feel I can write TA off as completely useless. I'll make sure to share my TA experience with as many people as I can, and I'll try to stick with hotels that are part of international chains, hoping that some minimum standards will be met (yes, I know, Choice and BW aren't very reliable). And when it's time to book in places where there is no well-know int'l chain, we'll go back to Lonely Planet and Rough Guide (I know, there are drawbacks to their top choices as well). What a pity, it's rare that a web site offering true user-generated content is a successful as TA, but at this point they must have decided to kill the golden goose, as it won't last if it continues like this...

honu, I really do feel sorry for your experience, but could it be you're overreacting slightly? I've had some bad experience with hotels which called themselved "Leading of the World", and which had 90% good non-faked reviews, and I had good experience with hotels getting only 60% good or very good ratings. TA isn't about the perfect world, but usually more kind of a guideline. And it's not only about hotels, but restaurants and places in general. I keep trusting TA for some generic reviews, and most usually I've not been disappointed. A few times it wasn't as I expected from it, but going for the local gem and getting dissapointed once every 10 or 15 times is well more worth for me than staying in some Hilton or Starwood properties every single time. Plus, I've been dissapointed from them more than once, too. It's just that TA shouldn't be your only source, but a valuable tool in your decision. I'm running well on this way, and so far, TA never deleted any reviews from me, even if I really gave a bad rating for a property which does reply on ratings of it's hotel&restaurant.

I believe TA has been spun off from Expedia (as a friend who works at TA has now moved to Boston to continue to work for them).

Has anyone noticed a decline since the change in management?

As AncienMaestro pointed out, it's inevitable that a site with as much user-generated content as TA will encounter a few questionable reviews or make some questionable decisions of its own. But on the whole, the signal-to-noise ratio is still very strong on that site. Even if 25/1,000 reviews are genuinely problematic, that still leaves you with a tremendous amount of useful reviews.

I find most of the reviews to be quite reasonable when you factor in the reality that the reviews will often be skewed by those with the most negative experiences at a place. Besides, you can easily distinguish between nitpicking and real concerns based on common concerns - e.g. if one person says the bathrooms are dirty, meh. If 10 people say the bathrooms are dirty, maybe I need to look someplace else. The pictures are also immensely useful too in showing the reality of a hotel beyond its own website.

For what it's worth, most of the establishments I have encountered that actively solicit favourable TA reviews are outside North America. Even then it wasn't over the top, usually just a note somewhere asking guests to share their experiences on TA.

Confused.. Its the message that was sent from the shilling account that was erased..

But was your review and rating erased as well?

Last year there was an NYT article about shilling and TA's responses to it.

"Ferreting Out Fake Reviews Online"

I still find TA useful, but I'm very careful. First, I almost always ignore #1, 2, or 3 rankings of hotels and restaurants. Even if they are great places, they'll be jammed with people who are there because of their rankings (and often finding fault because 'everything's not perfect').

Second, I review the negative responses to see if they are intelligent and if the things being criticized are things which would irritate me. Finally, I scan a large number of reviews, particularly from highly-rated critics, and consider carefully the ones which are intelligently-written. (Many are stupidly-written and I can't imagine what their use would be for me.) More recent reviews are given more credence than ones from years past.

I've seldom been steered wrong. On a recent trip to Prague, I concentrated on hotels ranked from 11 to 20. Scored perfectly (Residence Řetězová). TA was also useful for coffee shops and restaurants. Just use discretion and a judgmental eye when reading others' opinions. The outright shills (and one-hit wonders) are fairly easy to recognize--and ignore.

As always of course, YMMV http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...ile_tongue.gif

No, my review still stands. However, the message the owners sent me from one of their shilling accounts, which was proof of the shilling in the first place, was erased from my account. The original shill is still there, along with another 3 dozen or more recent ones, and I guess TA will do nothing about it, even though they know about the shilling. I agree that properties outside North America seem to be more subject to shilling (IME, more by 20-30%). However, that's where TA would be most useful (if the content wasn't already so "polluted"); for North America I can just use FT or MP. And it's true that even Sheratons, Hiltons, and of course IHG hotels, BWs, and Choice do disappoint, but you don't usually have a dumpy 4Points in the top ten ranking in a large size N. American city, just by virtue of shills... For independent hotels, it's more difficult to separate shills from authentic reviews, especially when the shills are semi-professional.

I guess I realize that some shilling is an inevitable fact of life at TA, Amazon, etc. But from this last experience I take away that, despite the promise to the contrary in the FAQ, TA makes no effort to curb this phenomenon (unless a particularly egregious example ends up in the papers, as described in the NYT article quoted by Marsden). In fact, my help in uncovering these particular shills was completely and willfully ignored. Unlike at Amazon, where I believe, shilling is taken more seriously, and there probably are algorithms to weed out at least some of it, at TA I don't think they want to bother deleting even one post, even when presented with unmistakable evidence of shilling.

TA rankings largely accurate, but have to do due diligence
 

Agreed-- can't just rely on the rankings, but on a recent trip to Italy, the reviews were largely spot on, if not the rankings themselves.

I am more skeptical when there are few reviews and all positive. Harder to shill enough to skew hundreds of reviews, and otherwise I know I'm taking a risk.

That's good that your review and ranking is still there and unaltered..

I guess on the other hand there could be reviewers that cause problems for the hotel needlessly.. so the other side of the coin..

Sounding board all comments here.. ranking is one aspect, but due diligence and checking out if the hotel meets your standards in terms of service, room size, location, price.. the homework still needs to be done of course..

Damn that's just distrubing to hear.. I know there's shilling but TA has always said they strictly do not tolerate/allow shilling.
<sigh> i guess they want the material.. lame.

IMO there's always going to be some of it about. In fields where you're somewhat expert you're at less of a disadvantage. For example, I buy and sell classic/collector cars as a hobby and can tell you right off the bat that many (apparently reputable) vendors on the notorious eBay have come by their 100% FB rating by hook & by crook. The methods are too many and varied to belabor here. Look up these same vendors on BBB and you will see that they have "F" ratings, on a scale of A+ to F http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...ile_tongue.gif

Yeah, that's precisely what I found so disappointing. Until now I hadn't realized that shilling was not just overlooked, but completely tolerated, possibly encouraged, likely because it bumps up the post numbers. The fact that they state that they will not tolerate shilling is meaningless in the face of their current MO. Of course, I won't contribute again, and I suspect that most people in my situation would feel the same. Give it enough time, and TA will be 80% shills, and 20% user-generated content or worse (it already seems to be at least 50-50 if you look at a lot of mid- to low-end properties in Asia and South America).

Yes, I agree that you'll almost always run into some shilling, but the amount makes a huge difference. Just looking at a few properties in Asia right now, anyone can guess that 70% or more of the most recent posts are probably shills. And this can skew the rankings dramatically. If most properties in any given city do that, you'd find that the most decent (or perhaps honest) hotels have bottom rankings and very few posts, because somehow they haven't "discovered" the joys of shilling yet. In fact, those hotels which aren't aware of TA yet are often being sandbagged by shills working on behalf of other nearby hotels. But those "honest" hotels are exactly the ones most people wouldn't bother to check out because they get pushed way down in the rankings.

So you have to find a strategy that allows you to glean relevant info by reading more and more reviews, and in the end it becomes a massive time waste. Or you can use more trustworthy web sites like FT and MP, where many posters have a long history, and shilling is non-existent for all practical purposes. But FT and MP don't usually cover independent hotels or lower end accommodation (which are often the only available options once you get off the beaten track).

There are, BTW, programming-based solutions that could help keep shilling under control, but of course that would reduce the amount of valid posts...

This thread has inspired me to sign up as a reviewer on TA. Should be interesting.

Even the BBB by hook or by crook, businesses who work the system and are members of BBB will get an A or an A+ rating.. Funny, one business had so many complaints listed, but all were resolved, and could not be resolved by BBB.. deferred to court, and still have the A+ rating.. ouch..

ANY reviewing system, be it organizational like BBB, or media based like the various travel mags, or consumer driven such as amazon, zagat or tripadvisor, is going to be subject to corruption. BBB ratings can be gamed or bought. Positive media spin is simply purchased. I am pretty sure the original Zagat ratings were rife with shills. The big problem here with Tripadvisor is the fact - as pointed out very clearly by the poster who dug up this thread - that they simply seem to ignore it. I am quite sure TA is well aware of the huge amount of shill reviews but is choosing to do absolutely nothing about it. Indeed I am sure they are quite happy to appear to be such a high volume site. Just as ebay don't really care about selling products bought with stolen credit cards or having shill bidders and people creating small fake sales to pump up rankings, TA is quite content to just have as many reviews of as many places as possible.

That said, I still use TA, but with extreme caution. I publish reviews myself, typically only of places where I have stayed at least for a reasonable amount of time. And I also post about tours, things to do, restaurants etc. Hopefully anyone reading my reviews can see that I am genuine as I try to give a balanced view and I have a number of reviews across the globe. In reading reviews I look for people like me. I used to take single or low review counts with a grain of salt. I know completely and utterly ignore them. Sorry if you posted one or two reviews but to me you are sitting in my assumed shill bucket on TA. Even when I see people with multiple reviews, I read through their review of the place I am interested in and if it is a review that is of interest to me, I look at their other reviews to see how well it stacks up. Even then I will be caught out. There are professional reviewers out there, and while most of them take $5 for writing a 2 line review under a new account, I am sure there are others who offer a more convincing service for more $s. But you can't be perfect. I combine that with what I can glean from here, maybe Expedia and go from there.

The forums are also very useful on TA so don't completely dismiss because of the shill reviews. It is a great way to find info on pretty much anywhere and they are pretty good in the forums at cracking down on commercial plugs

That said, I really did wish they would make more effort to crack down on the obvious shilling, and also let users control the ranking algorithm to filter out certain categories of review and property (so for example show me the rankings of New York hotels that are 3-4 star with reviewers who have been active at least 12 months and at least 5 reviews)

My sentiments exactly!

Agreed: TA (and many other sites) could do a lot of good by permitting users more flexibility in sorting through reviews.

Wow, I've never seen that, quite. Next you'll be telling me Consumer Reports has been assimilated.

Automatically on BBB, non members can never achieve above a grade ceiling of B.. Becoming a member allows members to achieve a grade of A+.. Pretty cut and dry that the grading system is bought..

Consumer Reports isn't perfect neither.. I like to go through its information for raw data and usefull suggestions.. but it can be outright wrong as well..

Just in case someone really did think this was just a TripAdvisor problem

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/te...eviews.html?hp

I was looking at TripAdvisor this morning and noticed three new, nearly identically horrendous reviews of a truly fabulous restaurant from newbie reviewers. IMO TripAdvisor should mark these types of reviews as possibly shillish (not sure if that's a word), and give the public the option to either include them in the search results or not. I would also like an option to exclude all reviews by posters with less than 5 to 10 reviews, say.

Another thing TA could do is simply create an audit capability. Give reviewers the ability to submit proof that they actually visited the hotel/restaurant in question, then put a big gold star on those reviews with a title like "Certified Review"

This is truly the key to using TripAdvisor. Look at the details of the review for why people rate a place high or low. Are these the features that really matter to you? What are the things that you personally really care about, and how do the comments treat these? I have definitely been steered toward or away from places because of comments in TripAdvisor, but it's only one resource.

The thing that's annoying me about TripAdvisor right now are those stupid pop-up windows that ask me to rate everything in my local area. First, pop-ups are a pain in the butt anyway. Second, I haven't been to a lot of those places. Third, even if I do rate some, I get the same pop-up next time, so what's the use of a rating that could involve the same person - maybe someone with nothing much else to do- entering ratings for the same thing over and over again.

To be honest, while I do prefer reviews from accounts with 20+ reviews, I don't mind taking single reviewers into my mind. It's not all fake from them. Of course I'll add another grain of salt to them. If you don't like to read them, it's pretty easy to "spot" those reviews.. imho a filter would be a bit too much "elite" feeling for TA, in my opinion.

One thing I DID noticed was that for those properties I've been giving a review which was way off the average (Either positive or negative) it took 2-3 days longer to post it, and this happened a few times already for me. If a property is on average 4.x, and I'm giving it 1 or 2 points only, it might trigger manual double-check of my review (At least that's the behaviour according to my experience) - just as well if you're giving a property a 5 points one which is ranking at 2.x in average...

Serious Reliability Problem
 

I have first hand experience and knowledge that tripadvisor is no longer reliable in regard to restaurants - the most bizarre situation is reviews that exist for restaurants that..... Don't!!

They have been advised by myself and others that restaurants we know of have been long closed (permanently) but the reviews still exist like strange phantoms.... Multiple contacts via their site but no action and inattentiveness.

It would probably be wise to check the date of the reviews and without question, one should call the establishment and verify they actually exist!

Sorry to interrupt your rant, but you do know you can hand in reviews of places you've visited like 1 year ago? On German tripadvisor, you can get a maximum of 900 miles for 9 reviews a month. I do write the reviews after I visited the restaurant, then store them on my computer, and publish 9 reviews every month. Now if someone is just doing so but visiting some more places, it's totally possible that he'll be several months behind on publishing the reviews. He might post it after the restaurant has actually closed. Especially for popular places attracting several reviews per month, it's very much possible to get couple reviews long after they've closed.. maybe also someone having visited it months ago, had a great impression, then learns about TA, and decide to post some of it's experience in the past months..

Sometimes TA listens. Recently I've pointed out one questionable review to them which was then removed after a week, and also a couple of reviews that were for the wrong restaurant. However, I also identified a restaurant that was closed and reopened under new management with a new name, but that one they didn't change.

On an aside, I'm learning something about how people rate reviews as useful. For one hotel recently I only wrote a couple of brief sentences and yet 3 people found it useful. Others I'll write a couple of paragraphs and nothing. I suspect most people don't want to read a detailed accounting of each of your nine courses on the degustation menu; they'd rather know quickly whether you recommend it or not and why.

Interesting observation. I prefer reports that go into detail, but you probably are right about the majority of people.

I think they're going the "credentialing" route by loading up on icons (or other dingbats) with reviewers. Ebay did that sort of thing with their sellers in addition to feedback rating, i.e. if someone has a high number, is a power seller, top-rated seller, has a certain color star, etc., then the icons go with the username and the implication is that the trust level should be higher. With TA I can see that happening based on review numbers and especially helpful votes.

It's not a "rant" and I'm not a "lurker".

It has now been verified that tripadvisor.com is NOT removing restaurants that have long been closed. There is also an establishment that was a B&B that was closed long ago but also exists like a ghost on the tripadvisor site.

If you would like to waste massive amounts of time and gas to drive to South Central PA from the urban areas of BWI/DCA to delight in the Culinary mastery that is the "Serenity Station" in Seven Valleys, PA..... Be my guest - We'll watch as you have the "confused look" at a boarded-up restaurant. Even better, there's an auction next month selling off the property.

tripadvisor's failure to realize restaurants exist in a "dynamic" state is becoming readily apparent..... Just another internet site that is dying.....

TripAdvisor under fire over fraud detection
 

The Telegraph: TripAdvisor under fire over fraud detection
Looks like this is the tripadvisor.co.uk site - I guess business owners realize there's some impact with TripAdvisor reviews...

I posted a very negative review of a property I stayed at last month outlining very specific complaints. Within 2 or 3 days of my review being published "someone" posted numerous stellar reviews countering each of my negative examples. So many positive reviews were published in fact, my negative review was immediately buried to page 4 or 5. The positive padding was so blatant it made me laugh.

That definitely happens. I also see the reverse - a whole spurt of 1 star reviews from first time posters, then you can check a day or so later and at least one of the reviews will have five 'helpful' votes already.

Trip adviser has entire forum threads about the " stupid pop ups " it's driving a lot of people crazy including myself. Since I go on TA almost daily, I could have rated the same restaurant 30 times in the past month. Maddening at times.