It Seems a Third of Tripadvisor's Reviews are Fake - Is Cruise Critic Just as Bad?

This is interesting because Expedia owns Tripadvisor

Not exactly the same as the issue here, but my wife and I had an issue with Amazon. We have a friend that self published a book. My wife bought the physical book and I bought the Kindle version. We both tried to place a review and Amazon deleted them both.

Reviewing a friend's product is forbidden by tripadvisor, not that the rule doesn't get broken. You have to submit the following statement on tripadvisor: "I certify that this review is based on my own experience and is my genuine opinion of this hotel, and that I have no personal or business relationship with this establishment, and have not been offered any incentive or payment originating from the establishment to write this review. I understand that TripAdvisor has a zero-tolerance policy on fake reviews."

The problem, as I see it, with Trip Advisor, is that they will take down a bad customer review, if the reviewed business complains, or disputes the claims in the review.

Tripadvisor removes reviews only if the property's representative or any other tripadvisor member points out a rule violation. Call the desk clerk an idiot in the review, and any member can report the review. Disclose the wifi password and the review can be deleted. Publish the full name of a staff member and the review can be deleted.

Of course, a property may choose to report only bad reviews that break rules, not the good reviews that break rules.

Posting fake glowing reviews of a mediocre property has risks. People that are disappointed that the property does not live up to expectations will write a bad review.

Tripadvisor reviews and ranking work in the five cities I am most familiar with, better properties are ranked higher, worse properties are ranked lower. How do the rankings look in your city? Accurate?

Note that a hotdog stand or ice cream parlor could be the #1 restaurant and ranked above an excellent fine dining restaurant. Rankings are based on review scores, not on which place is the most hoity toity.

I doubt that a third of the reviews are fake and I doubt that any algorithm can spot fake reviews accurately. I also would not risk hiring someone to post fake reviews, the risks are too high.

Expedia owned tripadvisor years ago, no longer does. Tripadvisor is a publicly traded stock, symbol: TRIP. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TRIP?p=TRIP&.tsrc=fin-srch

Thanks for the info Whogo.

So much conflicting information out there. It's hard to tell whats current. Maybe it's time for the FTC to step in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TripAdvisor

Fake reviews are not a new thing.

Years ago, my parents gave rave reviews about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. ;)

Needless to say, I have been a sceptic of any reviews since the age of 18.;p

fake reviews are not a new thing.

 

Years ago, my parents gave rave reviews about santa claus and the easter bunny. ;)

 

needless to say, i have been a sceptic of any reviews since the age of 18.;p

Brilliant ! (y)

You still need to be suspect on CC especially when it comes to tour operators. The Russian tour operators especially have been very brazen with their false reviews. Going as far as stating one long established and popular tour operator is shut down and she’s in jail.

Tripadvisor reviews and ranking work in the five cities I am most familiar with, better properties are ranked higher, worse properties are ranked lower. How do the rankings look in your city? Accurate?

 

I don't think they are "fake" but I find a lot of the restaurant reviews for Rome (as an example, since I know it well) to be way off the mark. I think travelers go there and eat one dinner, they enjoy it because they're in Rome, and then they go home and write a glowing review. Many of the places with top rankings are very touristy and the food, frankly, is not that great...

The thing about the reviews is two people can go on the same cruise, same restaurant, same what ever and can have totally different experiences, real or perceived. That doesn't mean it is necessarily fake. It just means they had a different experience.

Yelp is the same way....your business gets listed and reviews start to come in. Yelp reaches out to you to ask you to help pay for advertising on the site that has glowing customer reviews of your establishment. You say no thanks. Yelp starts to withhold new positive reviews so your rating drops.

 

Review sites are manipulated in many ways. I take most of them with a grain of salt. If it's all positive, probably a little hyperbolic. If it's all negative, probably a little hyperbolic.

Thanks for this explanation, it helps me to understand better. A few weeks back a company I did business with, earlier this year, asked me to write a Yelp review. I posted and noticed another positive review along with a 1 star review for this company. A few days later, I looked again and both positive reviews were gone.

I contacted the owner and he said he would look into it, as he told me he had more than a few positive reviews. He never did get back. I looked at Yelp just before submitting this and only the negative review is still posted. I have never relied on Yelp for reviews and certainly wont in the future!

I do find on CC and also on TA many first time posters who write something outlandish or ludicrous with the intent to create controversy. I am amazed at how this person or group of people find the time to post so frequently, almost as amazed at those who take the bait and feed the trolls.:D

I look at Trip Advisor and read all categories to get a feel of what the complaints may be. I find the forums to be better sometimes. You will see CC posts where one person may say, "I'm never cruising on this line again". Ok, so you had a bad experience...sorry. We all have had a bad steak, hotel room, rental car, flight, or tour.

I have never read any of the CC reviews (where people give stars), but I will read through trip reports. If people take the time to write things up, I'll read some of those. But I also take things with a grain of salt. I look at what they criticize and what they like. Same thing with TA. If it's a reviewer with barely any activity, I don't give it as much weight. And the same thing, I look at what they have to complain about or compliment. And I'm OK with TA removing a negative review if they have proof. I mean I've read responses from the establishment when there was a crazy review that said "We looked through our receipts, and the night/week you said you came there, we didn't have a group of 20 people dine with us who all ordered lobster..." Or something like that. Sometimes they need to defend their place as well.

The only thing I cannot understand about CC is people who have over 100,000 posts .Are they on line 24/7 ?

Actually, at the present time there are only three members with over 100,000 posts and all have been members for 10 or more years.

I've been a TA member longer than I've been on cruise critic. I've posted good and bad on both without issues. My rule of thumb for both sites is if they have 5 reviews or less, I immediately throw them out. I also throw out overly positive and overly negative reviews then look for consistent reviews on similar observations. It is not 100% effective but close enough for me to get a peek under the curtain and I've been satisfied with the results.

:rolleyes::rolleyes:OMG, not everything on the internet is factual?

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

I consider them all fake and gave up on on-line reviews years ago based on my own experiences. The most memorable was a hotel in London I'd booked only to discover subsequently some fairly nasty reviews. It wasn't five star but it was (is) more than adequate for me.

I also measure reviews against places I know and have been to and they bear little resemblance to my reality. The world is filled with too many fusspots who worship at the Church of Our Lady of the Perpetually Outraged where the congregants will loudly complain about everything and anything and sites like Trip Advisor and this one give them platforms for their whinging.

I also measure reviews against places I know and have been to and they bear little resemblance to my reality. The world is filled with too many fusspots who worship at the Church of Our Lady of the Perpetually Outraged where the congregants will loudly complain about everything and anything and sites like Trip Advisor and this one give them platforms for their whinging.

AMEN

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We always consider that reviews are subjective. I can love a 4 star hotel where someone that likes to book a 3 star hates the same hotel or vi ca versa.. Eg. because the checkout clerk got up on the wrong side of the bed that day, he/she came across as rude and there goes 2 stars off the rating

TA and CC are both owned by the same parent company in case you didn’t know.

Of course some of the reviews are fake. I find the worst reviews are those that provide opinions and summaries without any facts. Someone who writes that the service was excellent or top notch without providing even one example of how they came to that conclusion. Reviews like those are not worth the time it took to write as excellent service to the writer could very well be poor service to the reader.

We need facts when you are writing reviews. Lots and lots of facts.

I have been around CC from its first days (and on AOL and Prodigy in the ole days) and am not a fan of many of the posted cruise reviews. But we do believe they are nearly all genuine although often misguided because of the "cheerleader effect" and some who are overly critical of minor issues while completely ignoring major things (pro and con). The review format does not allow for any questioning of the reviewer or rebuttal. But on the forums everyone can have their say and readers can form their own opinions based on the issues they personally find important.

Although we often spend over 100 days a year on cruises, we no longer feel inclined to post formal reviews. We find the format too constricting and also prefer to put our opinions on the various forums to allow others to agree, disagree, or comment.

Speaking of TA, it is actually not difficult to separate the real reviews from ratings boosting reviews too often planted. You can look at the history of the reviewer which is often very eye opening. And one must also use some common sense. One example is that for nearly a year the #1 rated Puerto Vallarta restaurant did not even have food :). But positive reviews of that particular bar made it the #1 "restaurant." We often wondered how many tourists went to that "restaurant" only to discover the only food option was to send out for pizza from a nearby pizza joint. Go figure.

Hank

I’m not impressed with this Fox News story, which just repeats another story from the Sun. No original reporting or factfinding.

The Sun report- which is linked in the Fox story, also seems dubious to me. There is no actual investigation of this firm which claims it can ferret out fake reviews with an algorithm. No concrete information is given on how they have checked and verified that their methods work.

One and only one person is interviewed for the entire article. Check your sources! There may be many fake reviews out there but this reporting proves nothing about them.

I've posted many reviews on TA, and none have been deleted, even the critical ones. I very much rely on CC members for their info and advice. As previous posters have noted, read through as many posts as you can, and remember, everyone has a different take on what is good service, food, entertainment, etc. That's the only way, IMHO, to judge for yourself what is reliable and what isn't, who the fake posters are, and who is genuine.