Villa guests’ anger as TripAdvisor lets owners review them
IT IS often used by angry tourists to outline in vivid detail why their holiday accommodation was not up to scratch.
Now TripAdvisor is turning the tables on villa guests – by allowing owners to rate them too.
Middle- class holidaymakers paying thousands of pounds for a week in a villa are being rated on their personal cleanliness and communication skills.
Owners are also asked to review their paying guests with an overall score and submit their findings to the popular travel review website. The score sheet is then emailed to the guests so they can see how they were rated.
The new feature, called Guest Reviews, operates in addition to the responses to reviews that business owners can already post online.
But concerns have surfaced that TripAdvisor, which has not stated how it will use the information, could be breaching guests’ privacy because it does not state at the time of booking that owners can review them.
Claire Kingsley, 40, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, who paid £3,500 for ten nights in the luxury Villa Paraiso On The Beach in Marbella, Spain, last month, said she was upset to be ‘scored’ without her knowledge.
The mother of three said: ‘We had an absolutely fantastic holiday at this villa. But had I known the owner was going to be judging us, scoring my family and me on our personal cleanliness and communication skills I never would have booked. This has spoilt our holiday. When you go on holiday you want to relax. You don’t expect to be reviewed by the accommodation owner.’
Mrs Kingsley, a company director who is married to Lawrence, 50, a civil engineer, said: ‘We never contacted the owner the whole time we were there. We thought we were enjoying a private holiday.
‘We left the villa spotlessly clean. Afterwards the owner even texted us saying that in three years no one had ever left the villa cleaner, that we were fabulous guests and he would love us to come back.’
But she was shocked when, soon after returning to the UK, she received a review from TripAdvisor saying that Paul Hackner, owner of the four-bedroom villa, had rated her family as three stars out of five.
Mrs Kingsley, who has used TripAdvisor to book all her family’s holidays for the past five years, has now made a formal complaint. She said: ‘I am not an advertiser making money out of renting my property. Although TripAdvisor told me the review wasn’t made public, I feel our privacy has been invaded – and I am concerned about who they might share this information with.
‘I did write a review giving the villa four stars. Maybe he gave us three stars out of spite because we didn’t give him a perfect five.’
Mr Hackner, who is originally from Dudley, West Midlands, said: ‘I have already complained to TripAdvisor as I now agree it is bad form to be reviewing paying guests.
‘This has only been introduced this year but I will never again be giving TripAdvisor guest reviews. I want to put it on the record that this family were perfect guests.’
A TripAdvisor spokesman said: ‘Owner reviews are at this time only visible to the guest. Reviews are sent to a guest by email. We constantly work to improve the experience of our homeowners and travellers. Reciprocal reviews are common in the holiday rentals space.’
There are no plans to introduce the system beyond holiday rentals.