Tripadvisor now placing advertisements on top of reviews
The saddest news in all of travel is the recent decision by TripAdvisor.com to sell “sponsored placements” (ads from hotels and restaurants) above the recommendations of such hotels and restaurants from impartial travellers.
Starting now, these hotels and restaurants will be able to pitch their message prominently, to be seen prior to the time when a user scrolls down to read usergenerated reviews.
I have always expressed doubt as to whether many of the recommendations of hotels and restaurants appearing in Tripadvisor really were composed by friends, relatives and employees of the hotels and restaurants in question; that they were, in effect, fake. I have always felt that it was difficult to separate real reviews by real travellers from those that were paid for (although many of my readers have claimed they have the near-magical ability to do that).
So I have never myself relied on Tripadvisor.
But with the decision to accept sponsored placements — in other words, advertisements commissioned and paid for by the hotels and restaurants themselves — Tripadvisor has dropped any pretense of being an objective website posting actual responses by the people who stayed or ate in the establishments being re- viewed. In other words, greed has won out at Tripadvisor. Not content with the enormous profits it already makes from various online deals (Tripadvisor is valued at billions of dollars), Tripadvis- or’s executives have decided they need to earn more, more, more.
Clearly, a great many users of Tripadvisor will regard the sponsored placements as being no different from the public’s reviews appearing below those ads. In an era of greed, Tripadvisor becomes one of the greediest of all.
Farewell to what started as a thoroughly honest critic of travel facilities. Arthur Frommer is the pioneering founder of the Frommer’s Travel Guide book series. He co-hosts the radio program, The Travel Show, with his daughter Pauline Frommer. Find more destinations online and read Arthur Frommer’s blog at frommers.com.