Tripadvisor reviews of top-ranked hotels ‘suspicious’

THOUSANDS of five-star reviews for some of the highest-ranking hotels on Tripadvisor are “suspicious”, a Which? investigation has found.

The consumer watchdog has criticised Tripadvisor for allowing fake reviews of luxury hotels.

The analysis by Which? Travel of almost 250,000 reviews for the top 10 ranked hotels in 10 destinations around the world found that one in seven had reviews bearing the hallmarks of being fake. Researchers focused on hotels that had a large proportion of five-star reviews left by users who made no other posts on the site.

Nearly 80 per cent of the five-star reviews for one hotel in Cairo were left by first-time reviewers. After Which? reported its findings, Tripadvisor amended its listing so that it no longer cited the hotel as the “best in Cairo”.

In Las Vegas, two of the 10 highest ranked hotels received almost half (48 per cent and 41 per cent) of their hundreds of five-star ratings from review- ers who had made no other Tripadvisor contributions.

Which? said it also found a “hugely suspicious” pattern of reviews for a highly ranked hotel in Jordan.

Tripadvisor has since removed 730 of the hotel’s five-star reviews, though the hotel denies any wrongdoing.

Naomi Leach of Which? Travel said: “Tripadvisor’s failure to stop fake reviews risks misleading millions of travellers and potentially ruining holidays.

“Sites like Tripadvisor must do more to ensure the information on their platforms is reliable. They should be compelled to make changes so holidaymakers are no longer at risk of being duped by a flood of fake reviews.”

The findings emerged as reviews are being bought and sold in their thousands on Amazon, Tripadvisor, Yelp and Google Maps – written by robots, hackers and enterprising gig workers.

A spokesman for the Competition and Markets Authority said: “We have urged Facebook and ebay to act to stop the sale of fake reviews through their sites. We are planning to examine sites where reviews are posted.”

Fake reviews could potentially be classed as a misleading or unfair practice under consumer protection laws, but a judge would have to rule on the matter in a civil case before any damages could be awarded.

Tripadvisor said the analysis by Which? “is based on a flawed understanding of fake review patterns and is reliant on too many assumptions, and too little data”.

“It is far too simplistic to assume all first-time reviewers are suspicious,” a spokesman said, adding that Tripadvisor has an “industry-leading team of fraud investigators who work tirelessly to protect the site from fake reviews”.

“We are confident our approach works, and is one of the reasons we continue to retain the trust of many millions of consumers worldwide.”