The Power of the On-line Review Travel Sites

[Guest fountainhall]

There have been several threads that have discussed the value of review-based sites like tripadviser, with the general consensus being that you should take them with a pinch of salt, especially the most and the least favourable. This is borne out by an article in a recent Business Traveller magazine “A Matter of Opinion” I read yesterday en route to Taipei.

One issue the article examines is fake reviews. We all know they are planted from time to time, but did you know that tripadviser receives an estimated 13,000 questionable reviews – per day? To investigate these, and indeed all submitted reviews, the site employs just 100 staff.

Reviews do matter, and not just for travellers. Re hotels, they have “a direct effect on room rates.” Last year Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research published a Report The Impact of Social Media on Lodging Performance that analysed data from tripadviser, Travelocity and two other sites. The finding? “If a hotel increases its score by one point on a 5 point scale – say, from 3.3 to 4.3 – it can increase its price by 11.2% and still maintain the same occupancy or market share,” it found.

I have said before I have seen this work in respect of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore reviews. A second rate hotel (unless you are paying for suites or are comped to deluxe rooms by the casino), its favourable ratings have increased so the hotel now lies at #38 on tripadviser whereas it used to be around #60+. And if you think that is because the services and quality have improved, just go and try it for yourself!

As the BT article confirms, “such sites have the power to make or break a hotel or airline, a fact the travel industry is fully aware of.” Yet, despite the fact that “fictitious reviews are rampant on tripadviser," said one hotelier, “it is one website we cannot afford to ignore.”

Nor, it seems, to get their cronies to submit a stream of fake favourable reviews.

[Guest scottishguy]

Also, it works both ways - it is easy for individuals (or business rivals) with a grudge against an establishment to post disingenuous negative reviews to adversely affect or ultimately ruin a business.

 

At least in the case of Trip Advisor the reviewed business has a "right of reply" - there are other "user-review" websites (covering all sorts of sectors - from hotels to healthcare) where no provision exists for the "target" of the review to answer back. The other issue is that even if a negative review is a total fabrication, it can often be a case of  "mud sticks".

 

Therefore when I use these sites I tend, like Founty, to disregard the best and worst reviews and try to find the general consensus. 

 

  

[NIrishGuy]

I actually find the sometimes vast difference in peoples perception of their shared experience an amazing insight in to the human mind and it shows just how different we all are, it also on occasion also shows just how anal some people can be and what their expectations are versus the price their paid for the goods i.e.

 

" I was HORRIFIED that on checking into our half star hotel that we found on a last minute booking website with unnamed accommodation for £29 for a week for full board that on arrival and being checked into room 17 I had my husband go out to the pool and bring back four people to help him move the cupboard away from the wall so that I could inspect behind it LOW AND BEHOLD I found a feather which OBVIOUSLY came from the duvet AND it looked like it had been there at least two days !!  I was disgusted and we will most certainly will never be back and on my demanding £5000 compensation from the Spanish receptionist who I complained to every day of my holiday she was VERY rude to me in the way she looked at me and said "I'm really sorry but we can't do that for you", I mean just WHO do these people think they are ! You'd never find this sort of service in Skegness at the B&B we usually go - so I'll not be back and I suggest you avoid Villa el Cheapo at all costs !"

 

And then you read the next  

 

"We stayed at Villa El Cheapo, room 17, had a great week, the staff were wonderful, the room spotless, can't wait to go back ! "

 

God love the poor hoteliers as I'm sure sometimes they feel they just can't win with some of the moaning Minnies who are out there and expect the Ritz at bargain basement prices !   ( actually just on that - true story - the Ritz in London is highly overrated anyway as the last time I was there I was propositioned by two hookers in the bar !)  I was HIGHLY OFFENDED and I'll never be back next week ! lol  

 

So like you SG I tend to take the middle view and just use the review sites for practical information such as it a 30 minutes taxi ride from the airport and has ( or has not) loads of bars right outside the door etc.

[Guest]

A certain level of interpretation is required.

 

A member with 1 or 2 reviews who gives a budget hotel 5 out of 5 on everything may well be in in house review.

Then if there's a Doctor Smith from Surrey who writes a glowing review,"Vely nice hotel. Hotel owner has a good heart & keep cleen room", it's likely to be a fraud.

 

Those who post more than 10 sensible reviews and exhibit some kind of plausible travel pattern are likely to be more reliable. I look for these.

 

If a hotel is poorly reviewed by many credible reviewers, I prefer to avoid it.

 

 

Overall, I think travel review sites are an excellent tool to force hotels to raise their game.

Just the same as Amazon customer reviews allow people to avoid dud products.

[ceejay]

I place a higher trust in reviews on Agoda, because reviews can only be made by people who have actually stayed at the hotels.

I do use Trip Advisor, but as Z909 says, you have to do a good deal of filtering. Being a cheap charlie and often staying in places in the 300 baht to 1000 baht range, I tend to look for something along the lines of "not the Peninsula, but good value for money". That's what you can expect in that price range.

Nirish's post is hardly a parody. I think I have mentioned on here before some mad old biddy who complained about a budget priced hotel in rural Isaan that "the staff spoke very little English" or some such. There's nothing you can do with people like that except ignore them.

Often, my advice for Thailand is "don't book". That won't always work (at festival times upcountry, Christmas and New Year in the more popular tourist areas, Songkran anywhere) and you need your own transport in the rural areas, but it gives you the opportunity to carry out the most relaible review of all - checking the room out before you take it.

[TotallyOz]

I love TripAdvisor and I use it before every trip. I never look at reviews from people with less than 5 reviews and I weigh heavily those with 50 or more in different cities and I also weight those with more hotel reviews as more relevant than restaurants.

 

I also tend to read those that are thoroughly reviewed and that the same poster has just thoroughly reviewed other hotels.

 

I have not been disappointed when I do a little research.

 

I am surprised in FH's data on the rate increase correlating with a rise in the reviews. I guess I should not be surprised but I am. Have given both negative and positive reviews, I will say the negative ones I always email the hotel and give them personal input. The point of the review sites is also to give hotels input on how it can better its services IMHO and the reviews do that if honest and as a priority member at most of the hotels I stay, I am always open to share my opinions with the hotels.

 

I recently spent a week with a manager at several Crown Plaza hotels and he was impressing upon me the value of TripAdvisor and I asked him about the fake reviews and he said it was policy if a hotel was found out to have done this the GM would be fired.

[Guest fountainhall]

. . . the negative ones (review) I always email the hotel and give them personal input

 

I am a little more devious! If I have some sort of negative experience that could be corrected, I write first to the regional head of the hotel chain (or the President of the hotel if it is a more local one). As an example, I wrote last year to the regional head of the Intercontinental Hotel Group.

 

I had stayed at two of their properties in Harbin and Beijing. I always check hotel websites in advance to check directions from the airport. Both hotels had such directions - but only in English. No Chinese! Yes, there were basic maps, but Chinese taxi drivers are about as good at reading maps as Thai ones! My taxi driver on the long ride in from Harbin hadn't the faintest idea where the Holiday inn was! And although i knew my way to the Crowne Plaza in central Beijing, again my taxi driver didn't!

 

Also, on the website for the Being hotel, there were 4 types of superior rooms listed at slightly different rates, but no description as to what each rate offered. It took a call to the hotel to discover that one actually provided executive club benefits at much less than the Executive Club floor rates!

 

So I wrote pointing these out. I got a nice letter back, along with around 20,000 points added to my account! Had I simply written a questioning review, I'd have got no points! (Of course, if I'd got no reply or merely a reply without some goodies attached, I'd still have written the negative review on tripadviser  )

 

I invariably find that a nicely worded fax or letter with a positive suggestion to a top executive gets something in return - even if it is just the promise of an upgrade on a next visit.  

 

It can work with airline as well, although not as often. A 'nice' complaint last November to British Airways about major delays to flights which resulted in my having to shell out a lot of cash for a new Lufthansa ticket brought 10,000 free miles (even though BA can hardly be blamed for bad weather). The icing on that cake was my travel insurance shelled out every penny of the extra costs 

[a447a]

I found out, through experience, that Tripadvisor indeed does contain bogus reviews.

Before a trip to Vietnam I checked my hotel reviews on TA.  There were a number of recent reviews highlighting a scam going on in the hotel.

Against my better judgement I decided to trust the GOOD reviews, I guess I did so because the hotel was in a perfect location.

 

However on arrival, I found the scam to be true. "Sorry, have probrem with room.  But we have other hotel you can stay." Just like reviewers had said.

I, and many others, were left arguing at reception, but, in the end, could do nothing about it as we had all pre-paid.

 

As it turned out, if you had not yet paid, you got the room you booked if you threatened to go to another hotel.  Us pre-payers ended up in a dump across town whilst they sold our rooms to other guests.  Got paid twice for the same room!

 

I let the internet hotel booking site know but they did not post my review. It may have stopped people pre-paying and so the booking company would have lost revenue.

 

I posted about my experience on TA and, low and behold, the very next day there was another review by a "guest" who said the exact opposite of what I'd written! Amazingly, he had gotten an upgrade to an even better room!  And the breakfast was a buffet of gourmet delights! And there was no exposed electrical wiring in sight! And the rooms were immaculately clean!  And the T.V. suddenly worked!  etc. etc.

 

How could a hotel change so quickly??

 

I reported it to TA but to no avail.  Afterall, they get their booking commisions, too.

[Guest anonone]

 

I reported it to TA but to no avail.  Afterall, they get their booking commisions, too.

You have summed up the problem perfectly. 

 

I use TA sparingly, and NEVER for hotel reviews.  I just don't have the patience to weed through the crap. 

 

The location experts have some good info and I have even PM'd them on occasion.  In their travel forums, they have trip reports (I think they call them Just Back Reports, or JBRs) which can also be a good source of info and ideas.  

[a447a]

Where do I find the location experts?  Are they the ones within TA itself?

[KhorTose]

I too use Agoda, but ignore the trip adviser reviews.  I recently traveled to Shanghai and Beijing (I still owe a report) and decided I would try to hire a guide for Beijing as I was limiting myself to a short period of time.  I Goggled guides in Beijing and trip adviser came up as a source.  I went to the page and took the top three guide services, all of which had 5 stars, from their reviews.  However, when i contacted these guide services it took multiple messages to get a straight answer as to cost and what they could and would do.  Knowing what evasive answers usually mean, I researched some more and found a travel message board on China, that was not in China, and discovered that China has one of the worst tourist bureaus in the world. 

 

According to this site, guides are actually taught how to rip off customers.  They overcharge for services, they take you to their restaurants to eat and their shops to shop, you ride in their rental cars at higher then normal prices, they exhort big tips and they generally do not provide value for the money.  The guide services in China are generally for the meek tourist that is not an experience enough traveler to take care of themselves.  The most basic statement I found on this site is, that if you managed to get around and find what you wanted in Paris, you would be fine in China, especially in the big cities,  Yet trip advisor had pages of guides listed with stars galore next to them.
 

[Guest anonone]

Where do I find the location experts?  Are they the ones within TA itself?

Buried deep inside TripAdvisor is a travel forum called Travel Board.  I use the section broken out by geography. 

As an example, here is a link to the Thailand section. 

 

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowForum-g293915-i3686-Thailand.html

 

Note you can then choose a more specific location from the drop down menu "Select Forum".

 

Some posters are designated as "destination experts" and are indicated as such next to their screen name.  They are a great resource if you have a specific, detailed question.  They are usually very helpful and quick to reply. 

 

And as I mentioned before, the "Just Back Reports" can be a good source for info.  More reliable then the stupid, often fake "reviews" and you can get a good sense of the person reporting...if you have the same travel style, how they might be blowing things out of proportion....

[a447a]

Thanks.