BEWARE PHONEY REVIEWS
BOOKING sites are often the first stop for holidaymakers looking for honest opinions on where to stay. But industry experts say that up to 40 pc of online reviews by people who claim to have been guests at hotels are unreliable. Some travellers have returned home from their holiday to discover fake reviews have been left under their names. In 2016, Tania Wittensleger had to complain to Booking.com after the manager of a Morocco hotel left a review in her name that said: ‘All in all a very good hotel. Lovely staff . . . keen on fulfilling even special requests.’ The problem is that hotels know how important reviews are to customers. Booking.com says the opinion of online reviewers ranks third, after price and location, as the biggest influencer in a customer’s decision on where to book. Ming Ooi, co-founder of Fakespot.com, a site dedicated to helping customers identify fake reviews, says: ‘Customers have been trained to use reviews as validation and won’t take action without them. Most customers will not buy anything that has no or very few reviews.’
A senior executive at one of the biggest hotel groups breached TripAdvisor rules in 2013 by posting dozens of glowing reviews about the firm’s properties — and negative ones of its rivals.
Peter Hook, who described himself on Twitter as ‘director of propaganda’ for Accor hotels in Asia and the Pacific, was caught out by TripAdvisor’s Facebook app. Unlike the website, where reviewers can remain anonymous, the app displays a name, photograph and location, taken from the user’s Facebook account.
Cornish hotel The Cove was also temporarily blacklisted in 2011, after it was found to be bribing guests to leave good reviews. The hotel provided guests with a letter asking them to post an ‘honest but positive’ review on TripAdvisor, in exchange for a room upgrade and 10 pc off their next stay.
At the time, all but two of the hotel’s 26 reviews awarded top ratings.
TripAdvisor says all its reviews are screened prior to posting, adding that it has installed technology aimed at detecting those who try to circumvent this process, as well as receiving regular reports from the TripAdvisor community alerting it to any suspicious activity.