Tripadvisor slammed for old and fake reviews

Hoteliers attending a World Travel Market panel debate about managing online reputation took the opportunity to air their grievances about reviews website TripAdvisor, saying that “old” and “fake” reviews kept up on the site could prove hugely damaging to a hotel's business.

In a heated debate, audience members questioned why reviews up to ten years old were kept on the site, as they may have no relevance to the property today.

Heiko Figge, managing director, Guoman and Thistle Hotels who was on the panel asked TripAdvisor to justify why old reviews were kept up on the site, saying he “simply could not get his head round it.”

“Here we are talking about a hotel’s reputation,” said Figge. “No other industry is subjected to this. Why do you keep them up there? Is it just because you want a certain amount of reviews? The hotel’s business may have changed considerably since then so why keep reviews from 2003 / 4?”
 

Figge added: “Irrespective of what improvements you make in your business, TripAdvisor has chosen to keep all old reviews about the property up there. There has surely got to be a cut-off point. I don’t know how many of us need to be reminded about our misdemeanors when we were younger, but TripAdvisor just says: ‘When it’s on there, it’s on there.”
 

Karen Plumb, EMEA commercial director of TripAdvisor, also on the panel responded by saying: “The company view is that every review tells a story. Our current stance is that we will definitely keep all reviews up there, but the recent reviews carry more weight.”

Asked what was being done to combat the issue of “fake reviews” Plumb said: “Trip Advisor always takes the content of reviews very seriously. We put them all through a filter; if anything gets flagged our quality assurance team looks at it.”
She pointed out that there was a “lot of self-moderation that takes place. People often write, ‘ignore the bad reviews, I had a great time there’.”

Plumb insisted that TripAdvisor was “trying hard to become easier to reach for hoteliers”. In 2009, Trip Advisor launched an ‘owners centre’ tool, offering hoteliers the chance to respond to reviews and post photos of the property. Plumb said the best way for a hotel to successfully manage its online reputation was to always ensure it responded to every single review by “thanking the best and acknowledging the worst.” “You need to have the last word,” she said. “A constructive response to a bad review can turn into a selling tool.”