I haven't see this discussed on this thread. Maybe it was posted elsewhere. Basically this fellow opened a hoax restaurant that he made a top rated London restaurant based totally on fraudulent reviews.

I Made My Shed the Top Rated Restaurant On TripAdvisor

I really like the subtitle though ...

It's starting to look like Tripadvisor is slowly but subtly transitioning into a booking site as opposed to a review site... the review functions are becoming less and less prominent.

It's to the point where at the current rate things are evolving, I expect Google to become my go-to site for travel reviews pretty soon. I'm writing more and more of my reviews on Google instead of TA these days.

in the end...
 

we will have to return to empirical data once again.

the like farms and review factories will infiltrate any sort of review system eventually.


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I didn't know TA had fake reviews. They always post my reviews and I had two 1 star experiences with photos to back it up.

The booking ads are annoying tho

Some of the businesses seem to have a lot of single review reviewers saying wonderful things about the business, While not all are fraudulent, personally I suspect a majority are.

I really wish Tripadvisor had a function to filter out anyone who only has only posted one review.

I also agree that the reviews are becoming less and less prominent and getting to "traveler ranked" vs "what we want you to book" is requiring more clicks as well as being more well hidden. Five years ago Tripadvisor was a great site to use when planning a trip to a new place. Now they're monetizing themselves in to being just another booking site.

Agree on the review count filter (or non-filter) issue.

But I like the search function. You can select really bad reviews or really positive reviews and then search based on topic and then ignore the single review reviewer in a much smaller result set.

I've started checking google reviews in addition to TA. Again, you have to be careful with the one hit wonder reviewers (who come on to boost ratings of a place). Tend to trust reviewers who've left more reviews (and based on the quality of those reviews).

TA seem to run in to various difficulties with their "members" (users?), who complain on the forums about TA's shortcommings. The latest is a "glitch' in their review site, where when someone leaves a review, TA asks the user to "confirm location of business", and when he/she does so, the system throws an error "please try again later".

TA have these bods called 'destination experts', so as soon as someone posts anything negative about TA, they pounce on the disgruntled member/user, defending TA to the death. Sometimes not exactly sure what they are defending. (They seem adamant it's 'something')

I've left a handful of reviews, usually they've been published after 3-4 days. One review I posted recently about a hotel, TA got back to me asking to "confirm the accuracy of your description of the experience" (before a certain deadline) if I actually saw the odd cockroach at the hotel. I "confirmed" this and the review was published. (but, do all users do this?..or does it sit in their inbox until after the deadline?) Of course, a week after my review, the 'one review wonder' reviewers start praising the hotel about cleanliness and how good the wifi is (this was also something I mentioned in my review).

I'm pretty sure many experienced travelers are on to the one 'hit wonder reviewers' and ignore them with glee.

I agree totally about google reviews. How many have you seen with just 5 starts (or 4 or 3) and absolutely no associated text? Or just some stupid phrase like "Great place!".

Starting to see similar patterns on Yelp as well. IMO this is nothing unique to TA.

I will actually give credence to a single review reviewer if I see a lot of detail and what appears to be valid reasoning for their review (and if I see the same information posted in other reviews). But it doesn't happen often.

I don't see this much in the US, but when I was in Vietnam and Thailand, I had restaurants give me a free beer if I left a 5-star review. Sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn't.

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.