Watch out for Fake Hotel Reviews
It’s never a good idea to book the first hotel you find online without doing any research, but how do you know what you’re supposed to look for?
TripAdvisor, a popular hotel rating website, has been warning users about possible fake reviews. So how the heck are you supposed to know where to stay when you’re traveling?
There are some telltale signs that a review is fake. If it is the only negative review in a sea of otherwise positive endorsements, it may have been put there by a competitor. On the other hand, if a review seems overly glowing, it may be a hotel owner or employee posting for their own benefit. If a review mentions specific details that most travelers wouldn’t notice or bother to write about, that should be a red flag.
Before you take a review to the bank, check to see if the reviewer has reviewed any other hotels. If they’ve reviewed lots of different places all over the world, then they’re almost certainly a legitimate traveler whose judgment you can trust. But if they’ve only written one or two reviews, that’s a possible sign that the account was created solely to inflate the reviews of one establishment, or to hurt a competitor.
There are over 23 million reviews on the TripAdvisor website, and most of them are legitimate, so you don’t need to write off the site entirely. I give kudos to the site for actually warning users to beware of fake reviews, and doing what they can to police against them. Nevertheless, you probably shouldn’t plan an entire vacation around anonymous reviews.
If you want a detailed and unbiased review of a hotel, the best place to look is — who could see this coming? — a travel blog! Professional guidebooks are fine sources as well. Just keep in mind that any time you browse reviews where anyone can post an opinion, you’re probably not getting completely unbiased information.
July 31st, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I’ve seen fake restaurant reviews too. They were in a local newspaper where the restaurant owner had submitted them all.