20% of Hotel Reviews At Trip Advisor Are "Suspicious"

Above, one of my reviews at TripAdvisor is of The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Have you ever wondered about whether those online "reviews" posted at such places as Yelp and others are real or posted by shills for those places?

I have seen some reviews of restaurants and other places and found that a number of "reviews" are indeed fake or very misleading.

Japan Today has posted an article on a study of hotel reviews posted at TripAdvisor and found quite a number of them to be suspicious.

They wrote:

HONG KONG —Around 20% of online hotel customer reviews may be unreliable or fake, according to Dr Markus Schuckert and Professor Rob Law of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a co-researcher. 

After examining more than 40,000 TripAdvisor reviews of all star-rated hotels in Hong Kong in a recently published study, they warn that the high proportion of suspicious reviews should ring an “alarm bell” for customers. 

Although these reviews are not necessarily fake, they can be misleading and waste customers’ decision-making time. Given that many customers depend on online hotel reviews to make their purchasing decisions, the problem has serious implications for the hotel sector. 

E-commerce platforms have become so popular that online sales of travel products, particularly by hotels and airlines, have become the “biggest part of their business”, write the researchers. 

One reason for this rising popularity is the availability of online reviews and feedback posted by customers, which help potential customers to make informed decisions. From the service provider’s perspective, online reviews provide “fast, instant and easily accessible customer feedback”, and good reviews can increase their revenue.

I have posted reviews at TripAdvisor (The Monster Movie Fan's Guide To Japan is listed at TripAdvisor) on restaurants, attractions and hotels and I try to be as accurate and fair as possible. I have also posted reviews of RV parks and campgrounds at RV Park Reviews.

To read more, go here.