Trip Advisor Reviews and Ratings are Fraud
We have stay at a number of places based on reviews on Trip Advisor in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai. In almost every case, the ratings and reviews on Trip Advisor did not resemble the actual property. In addition, when we submit accurate, factual reviews to Trip Advisor, they are not published.
Trip Advisor is simply a fraud. Most of the reviews are fraudulent designed by property owners to boost their ratings. The ratings have become so useless because of this fraud, that Trip Advisor should be classified as a fraudulent web site. You cannot trust anything you read there.
Making matters worse, property owners and managers manipulate Trip Advisor as a part of their normal business operations, working hard to inflate their ratings by posting fraudulent reviews and encouraging their friends and employees to do the same.
Recently we stayed at two properties in Chiang Mai where the mattresses were so bad, worse than any we have seen. When I complained to the manager of the Sira Boutique Hotel, his first reply was “we are highly rated on Trip Advisor.” He seemed to imply that my complaint was not valid because of his Trip Advisor ratings. Curious, I looked at all the Sira Boutique Hotel ratings and found that almost all of them were written by “people” who had created an account for the purpose of posting only one review. This is a certain indicator of review fraud.
When I posted out to Trip Advisor their review fraud I was surprised to see that instead of acting on my complaint of review fraud, they simply deleted my factual reviews. The simple fact of the matter is that Trip Advisor is a fraud. Be very careful when you pick a Chiang Mai hotel or resort based on reviews on Trip Advisor.
Nigel says:
Saturday, December 20, 2008 at 12:22am
Could not agree with you more Jane! Just had first-hand experience with this clearly owner/manager biased site. Will never bother posting a review again, nor will I waste my time reading the posted propaganda in the future. Good call, and thanks for posting!
Doc Stewart says:
Sunday, June 28, 2009 at 5:40pm
I too have seen the Trip Advisor fraud. I’ve had several of my customers indicate that they have left positive reviews and that TA will not publish them. TA offers no response.
jen says:
Friday, August 14, 2009 at 3:39pm
they are frauds. I posted a negative review and they wouldn’t put it up. In addition, they allow some posters to totally take over forums and insult anyone who dares post anything negative about Punta Cana. Go check it out. I only decided to travel there based on their reviews. total sham.
Gen says:
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 12:30am
Could not agree with you more Jane, Nigel, Doc Stewart and jen. I wish I could trust Tripadvisor, but it is not possible.
Go check Sultanahmet Suites in Istanbul on Tripadivsor, too. This place is infamous for soliciting rave reviews and posting self-promotions using various pseudonyms. Almost all the reviews of this apartment on Tripadvisor are overly positive. Those reviews often include very intricate details of the accomodation and even future business/improvement plans, which genuine travelers would never notice or write in reviews. When a critical comment is posted, Sultanahmet Suites is very quick to post glowing comments to counterbalance. So it is obvious that they are working very hard to inflate reputation and go up the ranking. On Booking.com, the same apartment receives a lot of criticisms. Unfortunately, Tripadvisor is totally indifferent to this malpractice. It is said that some hotels in Sultanahmet hire professional PR writers to have good reviews written for them, and I have a reasonable doubt that Sultanahmet Suites is one of those employers.
Gen says:
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 12:53am
Revised Version
Could not agree with you more Jane, Nigel, Doc Stewart and jen. I wish I could trust Tripadvisor, but it is not possible.
Go check Sultanahmet Suites in Istanbul on Tripadivsor, too. This apartment is infamous for soliciting rave reviews. It was also detected that the owner of Sultanahmet Suites had created various pseudonyms to write self-promotions on numerous travel sites, including Tripadvisor. On Tripadvisor, almost all the reviews of this apartment are overly positive. Those reviews often include very intricate details of the accommodation, which genuine travelers would never notice or write in reviews. When a critical comment is posted, Sultanahmet Suites is very quick to post glowing reviews to counterbalance. Sometime those “reviews” even write about future expansion and repair schedules to rebut negative remarks. How would a genuine tourist have any idea about a repair plan?! So it is obvious that Sultanahmet Suites is working very hard to inflate reputation and go up the ranking. On Booking.com, this same apartment receives a lot of criticisms. Unfortunately, Tripadvisor is totally indifferent to this malpractice of Sultanahmet Suites and its peers. It is said that some hotels in Sultanahmet hire professional PR writers to get good written reviews in English. I have a reasonable doubt that Sultanahmet Suites is one of the employers.
Janet Willis says:
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 8:23pm
I totally disagree with you. I have written multiple reviews of hotels I have stayed in and all of my reviews have been published as written. I rely on the reviews of others when booking a hotel and have never been disappointed or misled.
oma says:
Friday, November 6, 2009 at 12:27am
Hi Janet,
It is really great that you have never been duped by fake reviews so far. It is good that you rely on and trust reviews. There are genuine and honest reviews out there, of course, like the ones you wrote. But let me tell you that there are also reviews that are not. Therefore, I must say that sometimes it is too dangerous to be naive, or to ignore the facts. Travel review sites are now heaveily used by business operators to promote businesses. Unfortunately tripadvisor has turned an especially popular self-marketing tool, and you often see clearly bogus reviews – glowing ones written by disguised hotel owners, and others possibly written by competitions. It is sad, but also is a sheer reality. As far as you know this, you will be fine. If you refuse to understand these facts, it may lead to an unexpected disappointment and anger.
Savrish says:
Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 1:21pm
Hi Janet,
Which dept in TA do u work for? Marketing or Support?
Gen says:
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 2:29pm
Once I wrote about how an infamous apartment hotel called “Sultanahmet Suites” in Istanbul manipulates Tripadvisor reviews using various pseudonyms. Sultanahmet Suites is also known to harass & threaten those who write negative reviews. Now, recently two reviews about this apartment appeared on Tripadvisor. They were criticisms about the bad attitudes of this apartment. It looks like the owner and his wife of Sultanahmet Suites quickly noticed them, got furious as usual, and, this time, they decided to attack participants of Tripadvisor’s Istanbul forum, using yet another pseudonym “jbromfield787”. This is what they had to say. “For all of you who are busy arguing, defending, posturing and the people who are busy posting as if you have nothing else to do with your time than slam the Sultanahamet Suites, I have decided to ignore all the noise. It looks to me to be a lovely place to lay my tired head and feet after a long day of touring. I believe we will be welcome and well taken care of. There will be 3 of us who can make an unbiased judgment.. I hope you are not out to ruin the business of these people because they are trying to make a living like the rest of this and don’t deserve this.So stay tuned. The new kids are going in. and we will let u know. Where I am from slander is illegal. But so are breaking verbal promises. I actually look forward to this part of my trip.” (written by the owner and his wife of Sultanahmet Suites, or a.k.a. jbromfield787). When forumites confronted “jbromfield787”, the owner and his wife lied as follows. “I have no agenda. No, I am not a frequent poster. But I am a frequent reader and traveler. As a flight attendant, I spend more nights in hotels in a year than most people spend in a lifetime. I will make no further judgments against your posts or for the “Suites” until I have had the experience for myself. Thanks for your input.” The pattern is exactly the same old one. In the past, they wrote, “I am a tourist, I love Sultanahmet Suites and the owner”, or “The apartment doesn’t deserve this (criticism)” sort of comments with different pseudonyms, and when challenged, they lied, “I am not owner. I don’t want to talk with you!“ Pretty stupid, aren’t they? So, it was very easy to detect the identity of jbromfield787 this time. It was pretty easy not just for me, but for the forumites who have seasoned eyes and great instincts.
Silk says:
Friday, July 2, 2010 at 7:02pm
We thought we could trust Trip Advisor but after we went to The Royal Cancun after reading the great reviews it was not at all run or management like a 5 star resort. So did our own investigating of this resort and noticed that once a bad review is posted suddenly about 5 or 6 Excellent reviews are posted. Also, they are the 3rd most popular hotel in Cancun with over 1000 Excellent reviews and the resort is only 3 years old whereas the number one resort only has 600 Excellent reviews. The same thing for The Royal Playa del Carmen. My friend who I went with got her “bad” review rejected because it didn’t meet their guidelines. The only thing we could see was that she wrote she didn’t understand what all the great reviews were about and warned people to watch out. It seems like it’s okay for the great reviewers to say things like, “don’t believe the bad reviews” but not the other way around. I wouldn’t doubt that this resort, which by the way has super high pressure timesales staff running about, are paying off Trip Advisor. We will never trust TA again. There is a new website starting up with professional travellers call oyster.com but unfortunately they have do not as of yet have any reviews for Mexico but when I wrote them they said they are planning on adding on. I will only trust professional guide books and websites with professional people who actually stayed there and their opinion over the garbage on TA. Good thing we have these websites to educate others not to get sucked in. Oh yeah, and I also wrote a bad review to this resort and it was accepted and I got a lot of very nasty messages from “people”… why would someone protest your experience at a resort? The purpose of the website is to write about YOUR experiences. So those nasty messages were definitely from the “sharks” and employees (management).