Tripadvisor AI tool gives glowing reviews to dangerous hotels, Which? finds
When browsing Tripadvisor, holidaymakers will now find an AI summary at the top of the page for the hotel they are looking at. These summaries may look useful in giving quick and easy information about the hotel, but in some cases scrolling down to guest reviews tells another story.
Tripadvisor's AI summary describes the five-star, all-inclusive, Riu Palace Santa Maria in Cape Verde as 'popular with many travellers', with 'spacious rooms', ‘diverse restaurants’ that earn ‘rave reviews’ and cleanliness summarised as 'spotless'.
However, recent guest reviews on Tripadvisor paint a very different picture.
Recent guests at the Riu Palace reported 'exceptionally poor hygiene', ‘no basic cleaning or hygiene standards’ and food that was 'awful, bland, unsafe and inedible'. One guest said she was served raw chicken; another shared photographs of flies and birds in the buffet food and another spotted ‘dead little roasted mice by the sitting area’ on her ‘nightmare’ holiday. One guest whose whole family fell ill wrote: ‘This place will destroy holidays, and [has the] potential to take lives.’
When Which? checked in March this year, there were 102 mentions of food poisoning at the Riu Palace. The resort also had 32 one and two-star reviews posted between December 2025 and April 2026 alone, 14 of which say at least one member of the party fell seriously ill with some form of food poisoning. Many were hospitalised, some flew home early and one guest died this year.
The hotel is now involved in a group legal action representing at least 412 holidaymakers who say they became ill after staying at the property, with seven deaths reported since 2023.
Another of Tripadvisor’s AI tools, an interactive trip planning bot called Ollie, also failed to warn holidaymakers about poor hygiene. When asked directly about the risk of contracting food poisoning at the Riu Palace, Ollie said food poisoning was ‘quite unlikely’, and that the resort had a ‘strong reputation for high hygiene standards’.
When the consumer champion asked Tripadvisor about its AI summaries, it said it prioritises ‘transparency and impartiality’ and its summaries ‘surface a range of both positive and negative community feedback associated with listings’.
Tripadvisor also told Which? that AI chat assistant tool Ollie ‘draws from a selection of reviews based on detail and recency, and matches by language and context’, but it added that it is a ‘product in development’, and that it is now actively looking into several examples the consumer champion provided where reviews did not match.
The Riu Palace wasn’t the only hotel that Which? found serious reports of food poisoning missing from its Tripadvisor AI summary. Several guests who stayed at Garza Blanca resort in Cancun in the past 12 months also left reviews saying they fell ill, including a wedding party. Yet Tripadvisor’s AI overview is once again glowing, describing ‘immaculate cleanliness’, adding that its dining options ‘earn [it] positive feedback’.
Another example was the Occidental Caribe in the Dominican Republic. Recent reviewers called it a ‘disaster and disturbing’ as recently as March 2026. Another called it the ‘worst place imaginable’.
One guest said her room smelled of sewage and that half of the 68-person wedding party she’d travelled with fell ill. Someone who visited in January reported that the whole hotel smelled of mould. Several mentioned the lack of access to running water – one guest resorted to showering with bottled water. In contrast, the AI review summary talks about the hotel’s ‘abundant’ amenities, with only a vague nod to ‘inconsistent’ cleanliness and ‘maintenance issues’.
There are other dangers Tripadvisor’s AI summaries don’t share. At Kaia Coracesium on the Antalya coast in Turkey, several reviewers who visited last summer wrote they felt unsafe due to repeated sexual harassment from male hotel staff, including inappropriate jokes and gestures, and repeated requests to connect on social media.
Two different guests reported that a male member of staff followed their daughters to request their social media details. In one of these cases, the reviewer says a restaurant worker followed her up the stairs to her room. The Tripadvisor AI review summarises the service as ‘friendly’. The closest it comes to referring to these serious allegations is: ‘Lapses [in service] noted by a few’.
This suggests that the company’s AI systems are capable of identifying and referencing these allegations, recognising that concerns raised by even a minority of reviewers may warrant inclusion in its summaries. However, questions remain as to why such references do not appear consistently and, when they do, why the language used appears to minimise their significance.
Tripadvisor said its summaries ‘use large language models and natural language processing to read recent reviews, identify the most common themes and then turn those themes into short, plain-English overviews’, and that its goal was to ‘make content from Tripadvisor’s reviews and opinions as easy as possible to digest, but also to capture and highlight the broad spectrum of positive and negative opinion without favouring one sentiment or the other’. It told Which? that summaries are updated on a monthly basis ‘and are rooted in the previous 12 months of reviews at the time of each update’, and that reviews are treated equally regardless of rating, highlighting what reviewers mention most often.
For comparison, Which? looked at rival platform’s approach to AI summaries for hotels. Google manages context in their AI summaries far better. Google's overview for the Riu Palace warned of 'potential for illness' and flagged 'outbreaks of illness' and 'concerns over birds in the buffet areas'.
The consumer champion also compared Google’s AI overview to Tripadvisor for Britannia hotels, the worst-rated chain in Which?’s hotel survey for more than 10 years. For the Britannia International hotel in London, Google accurately shared that the hotel was ‘frequently rated as one of the worst hotel chains in the UK’ and further highlighted guest reviews of ‘filthy’ conditions and ‘horrendous’ service. Tripadvisor’s own summary of the same hotel said guests ‘often praise the clean rooms’ and described the atmosphere as ‘charming’.
Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel said:
"Tripadvisor may insist users can still fact-check its summaries against real reviews, but this ignores the fact that it made the decision to push these summaries to the very top of the page. This failure to surface critical safety information is unacceptable and potentially life-threatening.
“The platform has a responsibility to revisit the accuracy of its AI summaries and AI chatbot. In the meantime, users should scroll past these summaries and look at guest reviews, particularly one-star ratings, and at reviews on other sites, to make sure their next stay is a safe one.”
ENDS
Right of replies
A spokesperson for Tripadvisor said:
“We fundamentally disagree with the premise of this investigation. Our AI Summaries have been designed to uphold the integrity and transparency that has made Tripadvisor trusted by millions of travelers for over 25 years. They provide snapshots based on high volumes of user generated content and explicitly are not intended to replace individual reviews. Users can easily click to see the traveller quotes behind each review element or access all reviews for that listing, eliminating any need to blindly trust AI-generated content.
“We also have comprehensive safeguards in place to ensure important safety information is properly reflected across our platform. Our AI systems are designed to capture all types of traveller feedback and we continuously monitor and refine our models. Our systems automatically suppress AI Summaries for listings that feature warnings from travellers about serious safety incidents such as death, drugging or sexual assault, helping ensure this content is highly visible to our community.
“Our AI-powered chat assistant draws from a selection of reviews based on detail and recency, and matches by language and context. We are actively looking into the examples where reviews did not match the intended property, and, as with all products in development, we will use the feedback to improve the traveller experience.
“No review content has been suppressed or hidden by the introduction of these tools, and the suggestion they pose danger to travelers is an unfounded claim that seems designed to generate controversy rather than inform readers. We believe our community understands that AI technology is still developing and has the common sense to check any AI advice against Tripadvisor's billion-plus reviews and contributions.”
A spokesperson from RIU Hotels & Resorts said:
“At RIU Hotels & Resorts, the health and safety of our guests is always our main priority. RIU has been operating in Cape Verde for 20 years and currently manages six hotels, totaling 4,650 rooms and employing 3,307 staff members. We maintain an average occupancy rate of over 90% year-round, and in 2025 alone, we welcomed over 400,000 guests.
“Let us assure that we operate with the highest standards of professionalism and service, placing hygienic-sanitary safety as our top priority. Our hotels in Cape Verde follow the strictest international health and hygiene standards, certified by external prestigious consultancy firms, specialized in health and safety.
“We reiterate that the health and well-being of our customers comes first. Our commitment is to always provide maximum safety and high-quality service to provide an enjoyable holiday experience for everyone.”
Other hotels did not comment.
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