It’s a common refrain: Tripadvisor is susceptible to fraudulent hotel reviews.
It’s not Tripadvisor’s fault. Whenever you allow anonymous users to post reviews from the safety of their desktop computer, you’ll always find those that abuse the system. It’s certainly easy for a guest to exaggerate the facts or for competitors to make up totally fake reviews.
One property owner in Scotland is apparently fighting back, suing Tripadvisor for one such review:
He believes the website, which is the world’s largest travel site, is rife with inaccurate or false guest reviews. He said that a scathing posting was made by a guest who criticised the food and claimed visitors were underfed.
Mr Gollin defended the quality of meals and insisted “our portions are certainly not small.” In his action, he claims the writer gave the wrong date he stayed “to cover his tracks. I believe that that one lie should disqualify his entry.”
Tripadvisor will likely prevail. The laws tend to protect review sites from the comments of those that post to them, but that doesn’t make the underlying problem go away. In fact, fraudulant reviews is just one of the many reasons that we launched GuestComment.
With GuestComment’s service, hotel reviews are captured while the guest is physically onsite–making it virtually impossible for someone to lie about the date they stayed, or for a competitor to make something up. Even better, if the guest is unhappy–with say the quality of the food served–the hotel manager can quickly respond and resolve the issue, before the guest gets to Tripadvisor. 😉
(via)