Using travel review sites Spotting the fakes
Provide as much information as you can when writing a review
If anyone can be a reviewer, how do you know that it's not a hotel owner posing as a guest in order the boost the rating? Or a chef telling you how good the food is?
Anecdotal evidence suggests some have exploited the system and posted bogus reviews to venerate their establishments.
Which? Holiday spoke to managers at some holiday review websites and they admitted that, despite efforts taken by staff to intercept fake reviews, some do slip through.
One example of bogus activity, according to tripadvisor.co.uk, was from a resort that mailed staff asking for their friends and family to post positive reviews from their home computers. Another case saw a holiday company offering a 10% discount in exchange for positive reviews.
Hotel owners
Hotel owners have even been known to write several glowing reviews of their own establishments – with the same headline and from the same email address!
A spokesperson for holidaywatchdog.com told us bogus reviews are in the minority. Websites realholidayreports.com, virtualtourist.com and tripadvisor.co.uk agreed, and holidays-uncovered.co.uk said only 0.1% of reviews received by them were bogus.
We were also told that when dubious reviews are discovered on a site they are removed immediately or deleted if they're caught before being uploaded.
In order to maintain customer confidence in site content, strict procedures are in place to snare bogus postings.
Some techniques include: reading every review prior to posting; analysing the wording of reviews; checking the computer IP address (the Internet Protocol address which identifies your computer) to ensure the hotel is not in the same area as the reviewer; ensuring several reviews for a single establishment are not being generated by the same email address; encouraging the website users to report suspect reviews.
The future
Soon bogus reviews should become more difficult to perpetrate, as the practice is set to become punishable by law. UK hoteliers and restaurateurs (in fact, all UK traders) that post bogus reviews may face criminal prosecution in 2008.
New legislation will see local Trading Standards officers and the Office of Fair Trading given powers under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) to prosecute those who falsely represent themselves as a consumer. The UCPD will also ‘prohibit misleading actions or omissions’ that are likely to negatively impact on consumers.
Use your judgement
If you are using one of these sites to help plan your holiday, then your own judgement is as good a way as any to ensure you're not scammed by a bogus review.
Some hotels will have many reviews – it would therefore be difficult for a hotelier to make an impact on public opinion by posting what would only be a few positive bogus reviews in a sea of legitimate bad ones.
Take note of all opinions and use your common sense to make a decision. Also, try to gauge if the reviewer has similar likes and dislikes to you. The website virtualtourist.com allows its reviewers to upload their own profiles, giving you details about themselves, which is useful in helping you discover whether the reviewer shares your tastes and opinions.
On some sites you can email the reviewer directly to ask more specific questions or to check the credibility of what they've written.