A Matter of Opinion
User review sites are a powerful force for the consumer, but what’s being done to ensure authenticity?
User review sites are a powerful force for the consumer, but what’s being done to ensure authenticity?
In 2000, four years before anyone had even heard of Facebook, Trip Advisor was founded, paving the way for usergenerated content (UGC). Fast-forward 13 years and Trip Advisor remains the Goliath of the travel user review industry – the US site now boasts more than 200 million unique users a month, 100 million reviews and opinions, and more than 60 new contributions a minute. The sheer breadth of its reviews are its tour de force, and chief executive and founder Stephen Kaufer has estimated that 10 percent of all travelers use the site to plan their trips.
At the same time, other web sites are emerging with different types of UGC – be it more focused, more attractive or more authentic.
And today, travelers armed with smartphones and tablets are taking their opinions – and the opinions of millions of their closest friends – on the road with them. Accordingly, Trip Advisor and its competitors have adapted to the mobile environment with downloadable apps and mobile-friendly web sites.
Everyone from casual passengers to senior executives have at their thumbtips instant and unfettered access to opinions about every step along the travel chain. The changes in travel marketing wrought by the UGCs that lived on desktops a decade ago were dramatic, but they pale in comparison with the tectonic shifts brought about by mobile technology today.
Such is the influence of consumer opinion that it’s been found to have a direct effect on hotel room rates. Last year, Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research published The Impact of Social Media on Lodging Performance, a report that analyzed data from Reviewpro, STR, Travelocity, Comscore and Trip Advisor.“If a hotel increases its scores by one point on a five-point scale – say, from 3.3 to 4.3 – it can increase its price by 11.2 percent and still maintain the same occupancy or market share,”the study found.
In an era where online reputation is everything, such sites have the power to make or break a hotel or airline, and the travel industry is fully aware of that fact. Dutchyankee, a contributor to our online forum (businesstravelerusa.com/ discussion), writes:“As a hotelier, these review sites can have a direct impact on my business, both positive and negative. [With Trip Advisor] fictitious reviews are rampant and competitors can leave negative reviews. The system has faults but it is one web site we cannot afford to ignore.”
Following a complaint from online reputation specialist Kwikchex last year, the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK ruled that Trip Advisor had to drop its “reviews you can trust”slogan owing to a complaint from thousands of hoteliers over allegedly fake or defamatory reviews. It’s a