Trusting Travel Review Sites
Travel review sites like TripAdvisor have mushroomed in the last few years with each claiming to offer something slightly different,- a greater volume of reviews, a wider coverage of reviews and so on. There has always been a suspicion that some might have been written by the hotels or guesthouses themselves.
Now a hotel owner in Spain claims a rival wrote a less than praiseworthy review and an English hotel said that they wrote their own reviews.
True or not, should you believe what you read?
Aren’t those reviews attacking the accommodation only written by disgruntled guests anyway. People generally complain rather than praise. I have written two myself and had them posted where I thought the quality of service and the state of cleanliness was unacceptable. I haven’t posted any saying how great they are. We also know that bloggers have been hired by some to promote their own companies. Have hotel chains done this as well? I suspect, probably yes. So what to do.
Take them with a pinch of salt. Treat them like you would treat any other piece of gossip. The fewer the number of reviews could mean people are happy and don’t post their comments. After all do you want a favourite hotel filling up so you might not be able to stay there next time? Thousands of reviews would probably be difficult for a rival or even the hotel itself to make up so it is probably a fairer view of things.
But my concern is that because these review sites are unprompted; nobody goes up to a guest and asks them to add a good comment to a review site, there seem to be an awful lot of reviews that are around.
Now a hotel owner in Spain claims a rival wrote a less than praiseworthy review and an English hotel said that they wrote their own reviews.
True or not, should you believe what you read?
Aren’t those reviews attacking the accommodation only written by disgruntled guests anyway. People generally complain rather than praise. I have written two myself and had them posted where I thought the quality of service and the state of cleanliness was unacceptable. I haven’t posted any saying how great they are. We also know that bloggers have been hired by some to promote their own companies. Have hotel chains done this as well? I suspect, probably yes. So what to do.
Take them with a pinch of salt. Treat them like you would treat any other piece of gossip. The fewer the number of reviews could mean people are happy and don’t post their comments. After all do you want a favourite hotel filling up so you might not be able to stay there next time? Thousands of reviews would probably be difficult for a rival or even the hotel itself to make up so it is probably a fairer view of things.
But my concern is that because these review sites are unprompted; nobody goes up to a guest and asks them to add a good comment to a review site, there seem to be an awful lot of reviews that are around.
Labels: Travel Review Websites
posted by cd-traveller at
05:53
1 Comments:
Since this was written, Associated Press has run a story saying that in June, warnings began to apear on some revies saying they could be biased. On TripAdvisor there is no confirmation that people writing the reviews have stayed there.
Frommer's travel guides said that they had discontinued their review section because they weren't sure the businesses weren't writing themselves.
So it's up to you. Make your own mind up
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