I must admit that I find a lot of the negative reviews on TA are unjust. As someone said above - it looks like some people just have too high an expectation of the properties - to the extent that I really wonder how they live at home.

As an example, I stayed at a hotel in Naama Bay Sharm el Sheikh. I booked it as a bargain buy without reading any reviews - and when i did - I was quite worried about what i let myself in for. Re-reading the negaives - I found that the main issue for most was the rather dubious and undersized main restaurant, and the fact that the main block tended to be very noisy at night.

When we got there - we found that the main block rooms were indeed noisy - but a quiet word with reception had us moved up to the quieter "upper resort" close to a better pool which got the sun all day - and with the hotel being slap bang in the centre of Naama Bay - eating out was no problem when the hotel food was meh!

There was nothing wrong with the hotel accommodation or its faciliteis or its staff, the food was boring and samey, and that was the only real problem - and easily solved by walking across the road to one of the numerous restaurants close by, but they were being slammed by negative review after negative review most of which were totally unjustified!

The consensus is clear that Tripadvisor isn't what it used to be and isn't always reliable. That's a pity, but moving on to the issue of "what to do now," quite a few worthwhile suggestions have already been made in this thread.

One I didn't see, and which I sometimes find helpful, is to go beyond just reading the reviews and post a question on the Tripadvisor forum. It can be found via the green headbar under a dropdown menu titled "More."

When I post a question there, I am careful to do it in a non-attacking manner. I do not say "I think such and such a review is bogus. Does anyone know if what it says can possibly really be true?" Instead I say, "I'm trying to decide which of these three properties would best suit my needs. Can you please help?"

Some of the "Destination Experts" are local and actually know a lot (others don't) and can provide detailed help in the context of their forum. It seems they must work within certain editorial parameters and maintain a kind of "ever smiling, welcoming, Mary Poppins" stance at all times, and this significantly limits their candor.

I try to ask factual questions, not opinion questions. "Is there a metro stop nearby? How long a walk is it?" Not "Do you think the neighborhood is fun?"

Forum contributions from other "ordinary readers" are usually fewer and less useful, mainly because that forum is difficult to use and they run into static if posting negative information. They quickly get discouraged from even trying to answer reader questions there.

I concur that we should focus on ways to deal with the deficiencies of TripAdvisor. Your suggestion of using the destination forums is apparently working for you and might work for others. Readers should first review prior postings and replies for their destination in order to get a feel for the “expert advice” and how to phrase requests for assistance.

My own attempt to ask for advice on star ratings for Italian hotels was met with ridicule and insults stating that anyone believing that the system in Italy is the same as elsewhere is naïve at best. Perhaps I could have started with a less controversial question since many people wonder if Italian hotels “buy” their ratings. In any case, I was provided with links to articles written in Italian explaining the star ratings, and when I replied that I was a very experienced traveler who does not read Italian, my posts were deleted. Then a TA member messaged me that she was Cyber-bullied on this same forum and no longer feels comfortable posting, so now she just monitors the advice. When I posted again and asked for TA’s policy on Cyber-Bullying, my TA account was inactivated.

Coincidently, we have just left Rome (the destination for which I was inquiring), but TA members won’t learn of our experiences since I can no longer post reviews.

I don't expect a hotel to be near everything, but some hotels are so dishonest about their location. Another user on here was looking for a London hotel, and I was looking at a few he mentioned to try and help out - there were ones who were 'close to major attractions' and 'handy for X Y and Z' when they were in an entirely other city to the attractions, and the journey would take 45 minutes - not my defintion of 'handy'. In a similar way, the plethora of 'airport hotels' that are actually a $60 cab ride from the airport in question. For ones like those, if I was fooled into believing their own press / naming conventions (and frankly, if you are booking an airport stopover in a hurry, you may not have time to do your due dilligence, and instead believe that a 'Toronto Pearson Airport Hotel' is relatively close, as opposed to an hour in rush hour traffic from the airport), then I would make that point on TA. Had I booked a hotel that made no such claims, then it, of course, isn't their fault and I wouldn't.

It only works sometimes, not always. The quality of the TA forum is spotty at best and the actions taken by the moderators seem capricious. It appears they are focused on maintaining a glossy facade at the expense of gathering useful content.

Like others have said, take TA reviews with a grain of salt. If it is a local small mom and pop you will often find self promoting reviews either from the establishment or it's competitors. Always look at the number of reviews a contributor has before trusting them.

Here is some insider info: TripAdvisor is 100% NOT reliable in Thailand. There is so much fraud for reviews there, and the business owners go to the greatest extent to hide their actions of false reviews, that TA can't keep up with it for this country.

So interesting. IMO for the most part, the reviews are fairly easy to discern the bogus and hyped from the factual and detailed if you read enough of them.
However, it's eye opening to learn that the forums are also censored to the extent that replies are actually inaccurate. It would stand to reason that other posters would correct the inaccuracies. Such a shame.

Aloha BostonFlyer:

Your information about the reviews for Thailand is consistant with my own experience with other destinations. TripAdvisor headquarters is nearby your home base and maybe you'll have the opportunity to mention this to someone working or consulting there. When TA became a public company, I had hopes that their cuture of censorship and inaction on fraud would change for the benefit of shareholders. I tried reporting my own concerns to their board of directors using this form:
contact the TA board

I never received a reply, and assume that TA management also censors communication with their own board. Perhaps you would have better luck if you are willing to try.

It is a shame as you say. TA has the opportunity to "do good" for their members, but unlike the Google business model, they instead "do bad things". I am thankful that FlyerTalk has such high regard for open and truthful communication.

I actually think many of the fake reviews are easy to spot, but the problem I think is getting worse in that the fakers are getting smarter and creating real looking profile with a picture of some random person and adding reviews of other hotels randomly to build up an apparent presence. And I think they get away with it because of TA's tolerance of openly fake reviews. It has built up a huge culture of hotels globally pumping their reviews and now they are just getting smarter about it. I think if TA had done what it should and stamped it out early it would not have become so endemic. Amazon have also been subject to shill reviewing but have done their best IMHO to stamp it out. But as pointed out here, TA actually encourage it, and if you criticize it in their forums, they wipe you out. TripAdvisor is a VERY badly run site and anyone taking any of the reviews there seriously today is gullible beyond belief. It is quite sad, I have posted dozens of reviews myself but frankly will not bother going forward, there are better sources of information elsewhere that are not so distorted.

As someone with knowledge of how TA operates, I can assure you that TA works to their fullest extent to remove fraud from their website. They have entire departments working on this sole issue. It isn't due to inaction, it is due to the sheer volume of fraud that makes it difficult for the teams to remove every issue.

Sorry but I just don't buy it. Either they are incompetent, or such departments are established to create the look of caring about it while not actually doing so. There are plenty of suggestions on how they can filter out fake reviews which they have never even tried to implement, and they clearly censor all criticism in their forums.

I gave up on TA long ago, but not because of the questionable/bogus reviews, but rather because they have lots of amateur travelers. TA folks who travel once a year, or once every coupla years, are easily impressed. If they live in Provo and go to an island it's nirvana.

I agree completely and am not buying it either. Why does BostonFlyer defend TA right after exposing massive fraud in their Thailand reviews? My own experience is that TA did not act on fraudulent reviews. Who knows if their "entire departments" of investigators reached the same conclusion; the point is the bogus reviews remained in place. Most importantly, why does TA censor all forum comments on this topic if they are truly doing everything possible?

I defend TA because you are saying that there is no action on TA's part to remove fraud. I know for a fact that there are "Fraud Departments" that have their own proprietary formula/method of detecting and removing fraud. Is it perfect? Probably not. I also know that while you may have had a bad experience with a review (i.e. knew that it was fake), I'm going to guess that TA probably doesn't remove every alleged fake review for obvious reasons (i.e. a merchant doesn't like a review, thus claims it is fake) unless it is 100% sure it is truly fraud.

In my experience, I have always reconciled TA with Google Reviews, OpenTable, etc. to validate the claims one one site vs. the other.

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation with or interest in seeing TA succeed or fail. I am only stating facts that I know as 100% true and accurate.

Thank you for your disclaimer. I have no way of knowing the staffing at TA and only have my own experience to rely upon. I am a traveler and not a merchant claiming that a review is fake. It seems to me that all TA need do in the case of a suspicious review (like the ones I reported as suspicious), is to require receipts. If you read my prior posts, you'll see that my account at TA has been disabled because I stated that the forums are censoring and bullying those members who question the accuracy of reviews.

Tripadvisor has become a Advertising platform site
 

Tripadvisor has become a Advertising platform site

What a very narrow view. Someone can travel every week of the year, staying at Motel 6's with one luxury resort vacation a year, and still be in exactly the same position of being impressed by an exotic island.

Or someone can travel very infrequently, but hold the resort to the same high standards they do in other spheres (for example, they may have business lunches and dinners in the best restaurants, in which case, I'd take their comments that a hotel's food offering were 'fantastic' as a good indication.

Forget 'impressions' or 'feelings' and look at what the traveller, experienced or otherwise, actually writes. I ignore the unqualified comments, and look for the details on how the staff were good, why the room was luxurious, what food was served etc. and form your own opinion.

I cannot see TA EVER requesting receipts. Firstly, not everyone who reviews has a receipt (guests at a lunch are just as valid a reviewer in my opinion as the person who paid), or don't have them handy, or they have a travel agent receipt somewhere in their email which has their real name, address etc. on it.

TA relies on users willing to write reviews - they aren't going to discourage them from doing so by making it harder, requiring personal information etc.

Secondly, if a hotel is paying someone to write a review - do you not think it would be very easy for them to send the reviewer a fake receipt anyway?

Thirdly, anyone with basic computer skills can type up a fake receipt - TA aren't going to know what every receipt looks like are they?

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.

I must disagree and offer Yelp as an example. Their business is growing rapidly and it did not suffer when they started filtering reviews.
See this link for an explanation:
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/03...explained.html

TA is certainly capable of implementing something similar and probably better. The fact that they haven't, and yet continue to censor discussion of this topic, is the whole point of this thread.

If it 'didn't suffer' I would expect similar volume of reviews etc.

I put in a middle of the road, frequently used by both business and leisure travelers, non-destination hotel not to far from me. Yelp has 2 reviews - one from 2008, one from 2012. TripAdvisor has 111 reviews, the first page all from the last 2 months.

Just because TripAdvisor is more hotel oriented, I checked the Indian restaurant I went to at the weekend - it is a small place in a small town - TripAdvisor 13 comments, Yelp 1 comment.

I stopped posting reviews on TA when I realized I didn't need to waste my time writing content for them that they make money off of and instead I could just use the site truly for free. Someone on a TA forum asked why I stopped writing reviews, I told them and not only was my post deleted but my account got banned. Don't need the account either to use the site so no worries.

Thanks for sharing, trajanc. So, it seems there a few of us on this thread who have been censored and then disabled by TA. I wonder how many TA members in total have had their accounts deactivated while TA continues to make money from those member's reviews? Perhaps thousands and enough for a class action lawsuit?
I agree about the free use of the reviews and use TA myself to double check on hotels. Their censorship is shameful, immoral, and perhaps illegal, but there is valuable information in many of their member's reviews.

I would have a real problem with any of this. First, a number of people visit hotels who do not even stay at the hotel. What about people attending a conference or convention? What about someone who is invited in as a guest of someone staying at the hotel? None of these people may have any receipts to prove they visited the place. Second, why should I be forced to provide any receipts? It takes time and money to fax or mail documentation to anyone and more time for them to review this information. Finally, I would be very concerned about the hotel receiving the guest information from TA once documentation is revealed. Documentation equals the loss of anonymity. Reviewers are apt to be less honest with the loss of anonymity. I believe TA would be under great pressure to share this information with hotels (and restaurants). Retribution could occur. I might post negative information about a property yet still need to stay there (due to business reasons). The property could give me crappy rooms in the future, etc.