This is an interesting article and commentary on hotel review websites. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2449754_1,00.html The Sunday Times – Britain
The Sunday Times November 12, 2006 Hotel review websites: a five-star scam
How can you turn a one-star hostel into a top hotel overnight? Write fake reviews online. Gareth Walsh and Steven Swinford investigate how the internet is throwing hotel and restaurant guides into chaos
The online review appeared to be a glowing endorsement of a fine hotel by the shores of Loch Ness. “My parents stayed many years ago and said what a lovely spot this place has. They were so right!” said the review of the Drumnadrochit hotel posted on TripAdvisor, one of the most popular websites for travel information. “Well done to the staff, who were really charming . . . Have no hesitation in booking . . . the food is outstanding . . . Believe me you’ll love it.”
The gushing praise, however, was not the independent judgment of an ordinary guest: in fact, it had been written and posted by David Bremner, the hotel’s owner. Last week he admitted the ploy but was unrepentant. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s that big a deal.” Real guests might not agree: some previous reviews had complained of high prices and shabby rooms.
Either way, Bremner is certainly not alone in exploiting the booming number of online travel guides that allow the public to post their own reviews of hotels and restaurants.
When the Old Bore at Rishworth, a 200-year-old country pub in West Yorkshire, reopened earlier this year one reviewer was moved to rave about the food.
“Stunning new pub restaurant,” gushed the writer on eGullet, a website for food connoisseurs. “Roux brothers scholar opens Old Bore at Rishworth, just been awarded dining pub of the year by Robert Cockroft. Tried it!” Scott Hessel, who posted the eulogy, failed to mention one significant fact: he happens to be the owner of the Old Bore. Hessel, who trained as a chef under the Roux brothers and Marco Pierre White, last week admitted that he should have revealed that he was the proprietor, but denied that he had been attempting to mislead readers. “I was misinterpreted,” he said.
Last week another popular website, allinlondon.co.uk, featured a review of The English Maid, a 70-year-old Dutch barge that has been moored on the Albert Embankment in London and was recently converted into a restaurant. “New Menu is amazing value (2 course & coffee £10),” enthused Mike Halliwell, the reviewer. “Can you get a fillet steak or calf’s liver anywhere else for £5!!? Best value in London.”
Yup, Halliwell happens to be the owner of the English Maid —but did not mention it in his review. Last week he claimed this was a “mistake” and insisted that he had in fact been trying to contact the editor of the website rather than post a message.
These examples are just the tip of an iceberg. The entire industry of reviewing hotels and restaurants is in the midst of a revolution that risks leading customers up the path to Fawlty Towers.
The traditional published guides, often compiled by independent inspectors, are struggling, while online sites where checks are few are proliferating.
A Sunday Times investigation has shown: • “Guests” who have never even stayed at a hotel can boost or depress its rating by posting fake reviews. • Poorly rated establishments can lift their reputations from one to four stars in a matter of hours by posting fictional positive reviews. • Some establishments attempt to damage the reputations of rivals.
So tough is the competition that even top hotels and restaurants would consider placing fake reviews to maintain their status.
The best travel guides have traditionally been compiled by professional inspectors who visit hotels and restaurants incognito and fiercely guard their impartiality. But it is a costly business and one that can no longer compete. The current issue of the RAC hotel guide, which employed 12 full-time inspectors, will be the last. It has emerged that the company which publishes Les Routiers’ UK guide, which had eight inspectors, will go into liquidation this week; it said that competition from websites had helped to drive it out of business.
Adam Raphael, co-editor of The Good Hotel Guide, draws a stark contrast between published guides and online review sites. His guide relies on reports from inspectors and an established database of 13,000 readers.
“We know their tastes, the quality of their judgments and where they are coming from,” he said. “Online sites are like a lucky dip. You may be lucky and you may find someone of reasonable judgment. On the other hand, you may have someone who is in the pocket of some hotel or restaurant. It really is a swamp.”
Nor are famous names necessarily a safeguard online. Fodor’s, the travel guide publisher, boasts that it has “spent over 65 years building a reputation for objectivity and high standards”, but its website is rather different to its printed guides.
Among London hotels on Fodors.com, for example, is the Vandon House in Victoria, which received a rating of just 1.2 out of a possible five after a scathing review last year. A guest from Ohio had complained of stuffy rooms, “unbelievable” noise from other guests, an unwanted 1am wake-up call, and “miserable” beds.
Yet last week reporters posing as fictional guests managed to boost its rating to 4.2 — ranking it among the capital’s top establishments such as Claridge’s — simply by posting four reviews giving the hotel top scores in all categories.
Fodors.com immediately published the reviews and failed to check whether the writers had stayed at Vandon House. Tim Jarrell, the New York-based publisher of Fodor’s, later said: “The website is a buyer-beware service. You do not know who’s necessarily reviewing those sites or properties.
“It could be someone with an axe to grind, a competitor, it could be the chef, it could be almost anybody.” However, he added that in the light of the Sunday Times investigation the site will in future read all reviews before publication.
Other leading online guides include TripAdvisor.com and IgoUgo.com. Last week The Sunday Times was able to post reviews on TripAdvisor giving top ratings to six London hotels that had consistently been criticised as “the worst ever”, “a horror” or “disgusting”.
One hotel in west London had received consistently bad reviews on TripAdvisor, with guests describing it as a “hovel” with “stains everywhere”. Yet when a Sunday Times reviewer awarded it top marks, no one checked on the discrepancy.
TripAdvisor, which insists that all its reviews are read by moderators, later admitted that it could not spot all fake postings but aimed to stop concerted campaigns to raise the reputations of establishments.
The chaotic nature of online reviews is tempting some hotels and restaurants to fight back by whatever means are available. An undercover reporter claiming to represent a marketing company approached a number of hotels and restaurants offering to post favourable opinions about them on travel review websites.
When he asked Bridget Pearse, manager of Vandon House, whether she would be interested in signing up to the service, she said: “You can definitely see the logic in it. It will depend on costings and things . . .” She later told The Sunday Times that manipulation of reviews by hotels “in principle does not seem right”.
Senior staff at some of Britain’s top hotels and restaurants also seemed keen. Stuart McPherson, general manager of the Cowley Manor hotel near Cheltenham, which is on the Condé Nast Traveller “Gold List” of the world’s top 108 hotels, said: “I’ll probably need some more information . . . I think in principle it sounds quite nice, because I think we’ve all been stung by various things on . . . TripAdvisor or the likes, and you like to have some sort of recourse.”
The hotel later said McPherson was under instruction to receive all marketing offers politely, but that any material would “have been thrown in the bin”. Real marketing firms are already advising clients that they should persuade guests to promote their hotels and restaurants using online reviews. Jason Price of the New York-based agency Hospitality eBusiness Strategies, agreed that hoteliers could use their own staff to post glowing reviews.
Price, who said his firm’s clients included leading British hotels, also told an undercover reporter: “(You can) create some internal incentives to encourage a guest to stay at the hotel, and then go on and post a review.” Price’s boss later said this does not occur.
Earlier this month Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the worldwide web, warned that his creation risked being overwhelmed by tidal waves of misleading and false information. “There is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths,” he said.
Many travel sites would argue that it has not come to that yet. The benefits of forthright reviews from real customers, they say, outweigh the pitfalls. Nevertheless, there is no denying the sea change under way. By using reviews supplied free of charge, online guides can avoid the costs of inspectors, hotel and restaurant bills, and printing costs. At the same time they can funnel visitors to online booking agents and take a commission for doing so.
The commercial pressures mean that even leading publishers of traditional guides such as the AA and Alastair Sawday are being forced to consider setting up websites carrying consumers’ own reviews, despite doubts about their reliability.
“We’re doing it nervously,” said Sawday. “There’s a lot to be said for reader reviews — they make a site richer and more democratic. But it may turn out to be disastrous. If it doesn’t work, we’ll pull out.”
It is not just the publishers of guides that can suffer in the new free-for-all. The former proprietors of one hotel in Torquay are, according to one website, suspected of sending threatening letters to three guests. Why? Because they dared to post negative reviews about the hotel on TripAdvisor.com.
Basil Fawlty would be proud.
Additional reporting: Megan Kaesshaefer
GUIDE TO THE GUIDES
THE TRUSTWORTHY Michelin Guide Michelin employs 500 anonymous inspectors across Europe. The 121 Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK are visited several times each year. No reader reviews.
AA Hotel and Restaurant Guides A team of 30 full-time inspectors anonymously reviews 4,000 hotels and 1,800 restaurants across the UK. No reader reviews.
Good Hotel Guide Printed guide that rates hotels according to user reviews, but also carries out a small number of its own inspections. It says it monitors veracity of guests’ opinions.
Alastair Sawday’s Guides A total of 300 hotels are anonymously inspected each year. Places included in the guide pay between £50 and £900 to appear.
READER BEWARE
Toptable.co.uk Online restaurant booking site that had 1.6m visitors last year. It checks with restaurants to ensure reviewers have eaten there.
Activehotels.com Aims to weed out misleading reviews by allowing only people who have booked a hotel through the site to write reviews.
City-eating.com Has 1.5m visitors a year. Anyone can post a review, but a full-time moderator flags up dubious ones.
TripAdvisor.com The biggest travel review site with more than 20m visitors a month. People must register before posting reviews, but anyone is allowed to register. Moderators attempt to catch irregularities.
Fodors.com Currently makes no checks before reviews are posted but says it will do so in future.
Have Your Say + Post a comment
Having worked in the hospitality industry, I can confirme that this is a practice that is not new, and it's unfortunate as it completely negates the collaborative benefits. I blame the sites who are more interested in search traffic than quality of their content. However there are sites out there that do qualify the feedback in several forms - one of my favorites, TabletHotels (.com), uses a statistical feedback system that can only be added to by people who have booked AND completed their stay. There are others like this as well so I would recommend understanding the qualifications of these reviews before you rely upon them on your travels Michael, New York, USA
We all know that this goes on but what can we do about it? I think the vast majority of people who leave their comments are genuine and on the whole sites like tripadvisor.com, fodors.com, igougo.com and virtualtourist.com have contributed enormously to helping people make informed choices about their accommodation, itinerary and which flight companies to use. I use them all the time when planning a journey. David Ling, Rome, Italy
I am the founder & Editor in Chief of Suzanne's Files: Quality Lifestyle for Discerning People. One of the reasons I created Suzanne's Files was to give people a resource where there is strong opinion and insight, every selection having been vetted by me (my personal experiences and those of individuals I trust). Readers can "comment" on my files but each comment comes first to me - if the comment is anything out of the ordinary and we cannot reach the person via email for further comment, we know it's false. People are so busy these days; most just want a clean, simple source to trust. This, I believe is why we have grown so quickly! Suzanne Aaronson, London, England
I suggest hoteliers invest their time and cash in placing themselves on reputable online review sites such as i-escape.com. I use this site frequently for travel - it tells you the whole story - the highs and the lows - but you know that you are going to have a great experience otherwise the place wouldn't have made it onto their site in the first place. Louise Britton, Bristol, UK
I read your article about the manipulation of some sites for accommodations. I think anyone who has nothing to do but go on to travel sites and write bald faced lies about accommodations are to be pitied. I am a participant on Trip Advisors which you mentioned in your article. I have found that "most" of the postings are true in the mind of the writer. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that if here are 10 good reviews and one bad one, you either have an idiot proprietor who knows his accommodations stinks, or an old sour puss who couldn't be pleased if you gave them the moon as they think it is owned to them anyway. I think using "hired guns" to rate accommodations is just what it is, someone who gets paid to do a job, and aren't always seen from their perspective as they are from the eyes of those of us who work hard for a living, save our money for our once a year vacations, and will tell the honest truth about our experience. Enough said. Elaine, Whitney, USA/Texas
I am the editor of i-escape.com, an online accommodation guide and booking service specialising in small and stylish hideaways. We publish reader reviews for each of the 600 hotels/villas on our site, but we only allow those who book through our site to post reviews. This is a simple and effective filter against manipulation by owners/competitors. In addition we read every review before publishing it, and often edit it to make it clearer and more concise (though without changing the gist of it). If there is any seriously negative feedback - which is rare as we have personally visited almost every hotel on our site - we copy it to the hotelier for their comments before publishing it on our site. Michael Cullen, Oxford, UK
Your report A Five Star Scam (Sunday Times November 12) claims that the public are being duped by fake reviews online. So what is the Sunday Times doing to make sure we are not duped by fake reports in Your World and Your Say? Surely you are just as much at risk and yet like other sites you assume that the vast majority of contributions are genuine. Ian Rumgay, Kemsing, Kent
I am a TripAdvisor member and have been for a number of years. When the article was published, I wrote a comment in their Forum together with a few suggestions and in conjunction with other members. Much to my astonishment Tripadvisor decided to remove all the entries related to the article in question. So much for freedom of expression and transparency... if they have nothing to fear why remove the discussion board in question? I welcome the action recommended by the previous contributor. Ranking based just on the number of messages posted it's far too simplistic. There are ways of making these rankings more accurate, as well as making it more difficult to post fake entries. It's impossible to turn a restaurant or hotel round in days, so if a place received bad reviews for months or even years, receiving a couple of excellent comments in a matter of days should set alarm bells ringing and these comments should definitely be filtered, manually or otherwise. Josh, Oxford,
I am the founder of Global Hotel Review (www.globalhotelreview.com), our website suffered from manipulation by hotel owners upon launch in September 2005, however to counter this trend a few months ago we have launched “Hotel Rank” which is a rating mechanism that aims to increase the accuracy of ratings by introducing variable factors that are outside of the control of the hotel owner, we have had good success with this method and we continue to twist the algorithm to provide further accuracy. It is humanly impossible to verify the accuracy of every posted review, however we believe that it is technically possible to reduce the possibility of manipulation by introducing more complicated rating mechanisms and not just a simple review average as it is the case with most hotel review websites. The growing trend of user reviews on the internet has been a successful and growing trend since Amazon introduced user book reviews in the mid 90s, we believe that user generated content will continue to dominate over time despite its vulnerability to user manipulation. Nawar Alsaadi, Paris, France
