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.