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I’ve noticed that when you mention the name Tripadvisor to accommodation providers, the vast majority give an involuntary shudder.
Due to some genuine bad experiences, there seems to be a widespread assumption amongst businesses that Tripadvisor reviews accentuate the negative.
Yet I am an avowed Tripadvisor user and I have only ever given two negative reviews. I have chosen accommodation I wouldn’t have otherwise heard of based on the glowing reviews of other users – and I’m sure I am not alone.
So is there more than my anecdotal experience to demonstrate that the user reviews on Tripadvisor are not bad news for good businesses? It just so happens there is!
I’ve done some quick research for this post by looking at the user ratings of 108 local Inverness area accommodation providers reviewed on Tripadvisor. Where available, I cross-referenced these user-generated scores with the Scottish industry quality assurance/star ratings for those same businesses, using other data sources.
What I found is that Tripadvisor reviewers are not only far more generous than you might think (the most common score is four out of five) – but fewer than 20% of accommodation providers are rated lower by visitors than their quality assurance rating would suggest.
Not only that, but it’s the little guys that fare best of all.
I sliced and diced the user ratings by accommodation type and discovered that it is actually the B&Bs of Inverness who score highest on Tripadvisor.
The trends are far more positive than negative
More than 50% of accommodation businesses I looked at are rated 4 out of five or above by Tripadvisor reviewers. The average (mean) is a little lower at 3.8, pulled down by the handful of very poor performers.
More than 50% of businesses also receive a rating from user reviewers that is higher than their Quality Assurance rating. Yes, the QA rating is looking at different and very specific factors, but it is a sign of a very positive visitor experience when a two star establishment can get a 4.0 Tripadvisor rating because it delivers that 2 star experience extremely well indeed.
Whether it is a reflection on the wisdom of crowds or wisdom of the QA assessors, fewer than 20% of accommodation providers are rated lower by visitors than their star rating would suggest. So who are those establishments with Tripadvisor ratings lower than their QA scores? They were almost exclusively 5 or 4 star B&Bs. Their visitors rated them either 0.5 points or 1 point lower than the QA rating and while I haven’t done a full text analysis of comments, I suspect that poor warmth of welcome/friendliness may have been a factor in some of these cases.
So to conclude – don’t bury your head in the sand. If you have a good product and good people, have faith that the majority of Tripadvisor reviewers are not out to get you. In fact, they’re likely to be pretty generous!
Let me know if you’d like to see more of this data and I’ll do a follow up post.
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on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Online customer behaviour, Research tools, Social media measurement, Tourism market research, Tourism statistics, Travel 2.0.
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17th March, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Great post (as usual) Vicky,
This post is touching on perceived value and a bit of customer psychology. Cross-referencing user-generated scores with the Scottish industry quality assurance/star ratings taps into the wants and need of various demographics. Without any analysis, my thoughts are that the needs for 2 star property are easily exceeded, and people are ecstatic when their needs are exceeded; where as a guest of a 4 or 5 star property has a much higher standard, and if any of those standards are not met, then they will complain. This is great news for small independent properties, but high end properties have an uphill battle all the way..
18th March, 2008 at 8:49 am
Thanks Philip, you make a very good point – I do think that the challenge for a 4/5 star property does indeed have a greater challenge in surpassing expectations.
I must admit though, I did wonder whether it would in fact be the three star propoerties who would perform worse, essentially falling between two stools and I was somewhat surprised to see it was the higher ratings properties where the gap was.
You mention customer perception of value. Presumably with a 5 star, people star with an expectation of near perfection and effectively “knock marks off” for every little thing that chips away at that, where for the lower rated properties, they effectively “add marks on” ?
30th March, 2008 at 9:09 am
[...] amazed at how many don’t. You’ll probably find that most reviews are very positive. (Tracking Tourism blog did some [...]
18th October, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Thanks for the research… I’ve been looking for some data to support the accuracy of TripAdvisor.com reviews. For our business, we found them to be one of the best online review sites as they do try to reduce phony reviews and keep things genuine.
18th October, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Thanks Jim. I think we weren’t too sure how the reviews would look before doing the post and I’m glad it had a neat conclusion! I think there is a fear of Trpadvisor within some parts of the travel industry whereas I think there is really not much to be frightened about.
1st November, 2009 at 3:45 pm
[...] amazed at how many don’t. You’ll probably find that most reviews are very positive. (Tracking Tourism blog did some research). But some ratings might not be positive. Some might even be unfair. Tripadvisor [...]
23rd December, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I am in a fairly good position to know how accurate and honest trip advisor is. I have a database of 4000 hotels on my website, and in addition our staff (drivers) visit these hotels on a regular basis (some of them every day) from Easter to October. We actually know the personalities as well as their properties. My observations of Trip Advisor and their cavalier practices does not back up the writers views.
In my view, and it would appear that of many others from all over the world, (and let me include The Times newspaper) they are a very bad influence and inflict a create deal of damage, quite unfairly and deliberately, on smal businesses who have no means of recourse.
While the service in principle is a good idea, in the wrong hands it is a monster. We need new legislation to enforce honesty on Trip Advisor and all review sites.
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