Trip Advisor - true or false?

Trip Advisor has become a vital resource for those planning holidays, with many people only choosing their hotels on the basis of its recommendations. As a specialist tour operator we are not only surprised by the number of prospective clients who select their accommodation according to this 'guru' site, but often puzzled by some of these choices when compared with our own first hand experience of the individual properties.

But questions, it seems, are increasingly being asked by others as to the reliability of its advice and the authenticity of the sources of information posted on the site. The latest to raise doubts is the highly respected Good Hotel Guide, as its latest newsletter reveals

It has also been our practice, when our consultants talk to clients about their 'Trip Advised' choice of hotels and don't share the same opinion, that they ask the client to compare one of their own personal favourites with the comments on the same hotels posted on the site. In many cases these reveal significantly different opinions, both where a client's favourite has been downgraded by comments on the site and where a property poorly rated by a client has scored highly. We are not suggesting that such discrepancies are necessarily suspect but that, short of a personal recommendation from a friend or relation, it may be far better to trust the first hand knowledge of a professional than the views of a complete stranger.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic - feel free to add your comments below

Adam Raphael writes:

Shameless

TripAdvisor has millions of consumer reviews on its website and is regarded as an increasingly powerful marketing tool by hotels. But its refusal to screen out collusive and malicious reviews is brazen. When a hotelier complained that a critical comment was planted by a competitor, he received this brush off from TripAdvisor: “Since reviews are posted by our members on our open forum, and we do not verify the information posted in them, we are unable to provide you with proof that this member reserved, stayed, or actually visited [your] hotel.”
This reply has the virtue of honesty, but it is shameless. TripAdvisor has dropped its slogan: “Get the truth and Go”, , but it continues to claim that it provides: "real hotel reviews you can trust”. It says that it uses a sophisticated algorithm to sort out the bogus from the genuine, and that hotels are penalised if they try to manipulate their ranking. But it is all too easy to evade these controls. I posted a bogus, over-the-top glowing review of a truly terrible hotel using a false name and a false email address. It was put up on TripAdvisor's website within hours. Investigations by the Sunday Times and the Times have come to a similar conclusion. The website is wide open to abuse. In its defence, TripAdvisor says that its users read reviews with “the right level of scepticism”. They need to. The sad truth is that millions of consumers are being gulled.

A group of British hoteliers is now considering taking legal action for defamation against TripAdvisor. A legal action would be fraught and expensive, but the website is undoubtedly vulnerable, as it has no idea who its contributors are and makes no attempt to find out. It would therefore not be able to put forward a defence of justification. The hoteliers are also mounting a campaign to force the website, owned by the travel company Expedia, to publish the names of its reviewers. Ending anonymity would stop much of the malicious and collusive reviewing that is going on. But TripAdvisor should also check whether the names and email addresses of its reviewers are genuine. Until it takes these elementary precautions, anyone using its website should beware.