TripAdvisor under threat from hotel class action
80% of reviews are fabricated claims Feefo
Hundreds of hoteliers and restaurateurs have threatened to bring a group legal action against TripAdviser for inaccurate and defamatory reviews. Yet a competing website Feefo, which has just won a Supplier of the Year award for its services to digital development, says that 80 per cent of reviews are fabricated, often by the company itself.
Feefo, which only invites actual customers to review products and services and which works for companies including The White Company, Gant, Jack Willis and M&M Direct, says often reviews are edited so only positive reaction is visible or written by someone who has never experienced the service.
TripAdviser is something of a bible for those of us who don’t necessarily trust the brochure. This writer narrowly missed booking into a hotel in Bermuda which had building work and an empty pool. TripAdviser saved the day.
But while good reviews can be the making of hotels, restaurants and b& bs, bad reviews can not only protect the potential customer, they can break the business.
“To a small business with only a few reviews, claims of food poisoning can be devastating,” said Chris Emmins of KwikChex, the company bringing the legal group action on behalf of the angry hoteliers and restaurateurs.
“We have looked at around 100 [of such cases] and there has been no report to the local health authority and we could find no evidence of food poisoning.”
KwikChex’s lawyers are also looking at dozens of unverified claims of theft or racism too.
The outcome of the legal action may be that reviewers may not be able to remain anonymous for much longer: KwikChex is considering asking the courts to identify those making defamatory comments.
“A legal precedent has already been set regarding disclosure for these type of cases,” he said.
TripAdvisor is not the only site to have built a business around user-generated reviews – Holiday Watchdog and Holidays Uncovered are among its rivals – but it is by far the most influential.
Some websites are open about their inability to police reviews. Bedbugregistry.com, a website set up in the US to report incidences of bedbugs in hotels, admits that it has no idea whether postings are genuine. “Our reports have not been vetted for accuracy,” it says. “We remind readers to take things with a grain of salt. Some reports are posted by malicious tenants. Some are posted by evil competitors. Some are posted by hypochondriacs.”
Several travel companies have embraced these user-generated websites, employing staff to contact guests after they have checked out (to right any wrongs and encourage positive feedback). Hotel giants such as the Accor group (Novotel, Sofitel, Mercure) send out emails encouraging guests to post reviews; tourist boards, such as VisitScotland and VisitLondon, include TripAdvisor ratings on their websites.
According to the Daily Telegraph, other owners are less sanguine. Frank McCready, owner of the Old Brewery Guesthouse in North Yorkshire, set up a website in March entitled ihateTripAdvisor.org.uk to raise awareness about the damage that misleading TripAdvisor reviews can cause. He says: “TripAdvisor’s successful business model appears to be based upon a minimum of checks, an arrogant disregard for accuracy and truthfulness, and a customer-service regime that is virtually non-existent. It is too easy for hotels to write their own reviews, or pay others to write them. It is too easy for reviewers to post untruthful or damaging reviews, or for hoteliers to ‘sabotage’ their competitors.”