Fake reviews have forced restaurants and hoteliers out of business and caused “great distress” to bed and breakfast owners who “ take it very personally”, he said. Mr Emmins said that he was aware of numerous agencies offering glowing reviews for a price.
“Some of them have hundreds of TripAdvisor accounts and they use proxy accounts [to disguise their identity]. TripAdvisor has absolutely no way of detecting them.”
The ASA upheld complaints that TripAdvisor’s claims to offer “trusted advice from real travellers” was misleading and could not be substantiated.
TripAdvisor argued that it had “advanced and highly effective fraud detection systems” and that the effect of “small numbers of fraudulent reviews was effectively negligible”.
As members know, this is something we have long been concerned about, and will again report on in the next issue of Bed & Breakfast News, due out on Monday (6 Feb).
Good news. But if this only removes the TA claims on their .co.uk website anyone abroad looking on the .com website will not see any difference. Will regulators in other countries take note of this?
ReplyDeleteA journalist on the Today programme this morning (Feb 1) said he had posted a review of a hotel he had never stayed in to test if Tripadvisor is able to spot false reviews. He said he would tweet if the review appeared on the hotels TA page.
It's terrible when someone trashes your bed and breakfast just because they're the competition. Some of this online stuff never goes away.
ReplyDeletewebsite will not see any difference
ReplyDeleteBed & Breakfast