Fake Travel Reviews are no Issue - Interview with Ian Rumgay from Tripadvisor continued

Since readers of fastenyourseatbelts.at have expressed interest on the issue of fake reviews, here is part two of my (e-mail-)interview with Ian Rumgay, communications manager for TripAdvisor Europe. Read about their take of fraudulent reviews.

Fake reviews are not really an issue. Putting it into context the overwhelming majority of
reviews are genuine. Only a small handful might beat our security.   

The integrity of TripAdvisor reviews is protected by:

1. A team of quality assurance specialists who are trained in manual review fraud detection and read every review prior to posting
2. Proprietary automated tools that help identify attempts to subvert the system
3. Spot checks by TripAdvisor
4. Our massive community of more than 20 million monthly visitors who help police our content

When a suspicious review is identified, it is immediately taken down and we have measures to penalize hotels for attempts to manipulate the system. The vast majority of hoteliers understand the tremendous risk to their reputation and their business if they attempt to post fraudulent information on review sites like TripAdvisor.

Our safeguards are principally aimed at detecting systematic attempts to manipulate the system. However while the odd fake review may slip through the net, the sheer volume of reviews on our site provides an additional safeguard. According to our research, the typical traveller reads pages of reviews before selecting a property. The overall context provided by our extensive content gives travellers the ability to make an educated evaluation before they book and travel. Our candid traveller photos and videos also help them evaluate a property.

By the way, the video service TripAdvisor launched a couple of months ago is up and running and getting good take-up.

Part I About Hotel 2.0 & Travel 2.0 - Interview with Ian Rumgay from TripAdvisor

Also read my following articles on travel 2.0 in English:
Travel planning today - Greetings from the Easter Island III
Marketing manifesto for the travel industry - Interpretation of Jeff Jarvis
More to come at English+posts.

Comments

[Kommentiert von: Eric Miller]

I would have to agree with Ian Rumgay’s assessment of fake travel reviews being an issue. I’ve been using TravelPost a lot for my travel planning. Like TripAdvisor they do user generated hotel reviews. While browsing through their hotel reviews, I can’t say I’ve found many (if any at all) fake reviews. Most of them have seemed relatively genuine. I’m pretty sure TravelPost does something similar to TripAdvisor by monitoring what is accepted and what isn’t. Either way I think in most cases, it’s pretty safe to read and perhaps make choices based on user reviews. The truth is, if the majority of reviews are negative and then there’s that one uber positive review, chances are that people will listen to the majority. Hopefully user reviews will remain a good source for a long time to come

[Kommentiert von: karin]

I have not observed that most are negative. I think, there are many positives too.
As with my personal assessment of Amazon: If I only find positive reviews, it turns me of the book. I think, negative reviews are essential to assess the value of a service. They belong to the spectrum and complete it. As we would say in German.