Comments on: Tripadvisor reviews: how scared should you be?

By: Frank McCready

Frank McCready — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:04:32 +0000

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.

By: Wilhelmus » Blog Archive » Marketing your small tourism business in the 21th century: #3 Monitor and Respect Tripadvisor

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:45:04 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:34:48 +0000

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.

By: Jim Barber

Jim Barber — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:46:39 +0000

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.

By: Marketing your small tourism business in the 21th century: #3 Monitor and Respect Tripadvisor : Tips from the T-List

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:09:14 +0000

[...] amazed at how many don’t. You’ll probably find that most reviews are very positive. (Tracking Tourism blog did some [...]

By: Vicky

Vicky — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:49:27 +0000

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” ?

By: Philip Caines

Philip Caines — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:51:20 +0000

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..