Wednesday February 15, 2012

JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

TripAdvisor warns of hotels posting fake reviews

Travel Jul. 20, 2009 - 06:30AM JST ( 13 )

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13 Comments

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ilcub76Jul. 20, 2009 - 10:13AM JST

But Arthur Frommer, founder of the Frommer’s travel guides, said travelers should rely on the advice of experts, such as guidebook writers or journalists.

Of course he would say this!! If he doesn't sell books, he doesn't make money.

I regularly look at Trip Advisor and Virtual Tourist when deciding on a hotel overseas. Until now, I've really had no problems. On the other hand, I went to a place in the Lonely Planet that was absolutely horrible.
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fishyJul. 20, 2009 - 10:49AM JST

fake reviews ??? that's terrible... i rely on reviews when deciding hotels..
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TumbleDryJul. 20, 2009 - 07:19PM JST

The hotel I found in Kabul had bullet holes...
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bdiegoJul. 21, 2009 - 06:45AM JST

This is why you look at hotels where the reviews number in the dozens or hundreds. Those have always been fair in my experience. And it's pretty easy to spot the objective facts, as well as relevant details rather than the review rating.

Tripadviser has been pretty spot on. Their only fault is in recommending faucets with less than 2.1% carbon alloy.
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bdiegoJul. 21, 2009 - 06:46AM JST

Frommers and Lonely Planet are absolutely awful. 0 out of 5 stars. TripAdvisor is in another league. I planned my honeymoon and subsequent trips and highly recommend the site.
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StonecoldsobaJul. 21, 2009 - 07:59AM JST

bdiego:

Frommers and Lonely Planet are absolutely awful. 0 out of 5 stars. TripAdvisor is in another league. I planned my honeymoon and subsequent trips and highly recommend the site.

Ah, but how can we trust your review of the reviewers?
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gogogoJul. 21, 2009 - 11:03AM JST

If they know the hotels are posting fake reviews why don't they remove them or do something about it, seems like a quick promotional stunt by TripAdvisor.
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MonoflowJul. 21, 2009 - 03:40PM JST

If there is only one negative review, then you should be aware and check it out. However, some people write negative reviews only by a irrelevant bad experience and then find themself writing more bad things about the hotel, because they felt like that. All in all, check out the reviews, book only from at least 3 star and if possible withing a hotel-chain. I did so and never had any problems...
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motytrahJul. 22, 2009 - 12:24AM JST

If there are 20 bad reviews and one good review, I'm taking the good review with a grain of salt. I think TA also normalizes the rating to help keep the ranks in a more realistic order.
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sugi2009Nov. 23, 2009 - 03:22AM JST

Hello to all.... A question...Do you think I can take a lawyer against Tripadvisor? I mean...In Europe you cannot publish anything that offends someone or you must pay a lot of money but Tripadvisor published a very offensive comment .

In this comment the anonymous wrote: "xxxxx treated us terribly. He lied to us, stereotyped us, screamed at us, and worst of all - threatned us. It was insane and scary.

xxxxxx cares so much about his reputation, it's a little crazy. You can even find part of his website online where he literally finds every negative review ever written about him, and rebutts the negative points. I'm sure this one will be there soon, and I'm sure he will make up some crazy reasoning like he does with everyone else. "

This is of course totally false and should be considered VERY OFFENSIVE in Europe and for this reason not legal you cannot publish that. In Europe we call it: DEFAMATION....especially if it's made by an ANONYMOUS person...Do you think I should take a Lawyer?

Tripadvisor accepts this kind of ANONYMOUS comments made by anonymous persons that cannot prove they really stayed in the places (that has a name and an adress...so no anonymous) they reviewed.This is bad I think and not really legal

Tripadvisor publishes without investigating these type of comments and anytime a hotel or a Guesthouse want to reply...we have a lot of problems cause "we don't follow their Criterias"!!!..WHICH Criterias if they accept this type of offensive comments made by some Anonymous?...We also received some Fake comments by persons that were supposed to be with us in the period of our Seasonal Clousure!!!...We wrote that to Tripadvisor and Tripadvisor didn't want to move away the comment!!!...We needed 1 month to demostrate that we were closed!!!...But I mean...they consider more comments made by ANONYMOUS than reply made by HOTELS with NAME and ADRESS!..This is terrible!

What's your advise? Thanks a lot to all If you want I can also give you the link of this comment
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sugi2009Nov. 24, 2009 - 02:30AM JST

This is the Reply made by tripadvisor !!!! What "Criteria do they have? They publish anonymous defamation and they don't accept our reply (NOT Anonymous!)

Dear Giloc,

Thank you for taking the time to write a management response on TripAdvisor.

Unfortunately, we cannot publish your response because it does not meet our posting criteria. We look forward to receiving your edited and resubmitted response through our management response form.

Please see the management response guidelines posted on our site at:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/userrevmgmtrsp_rules.html

We do not post management responses that contain quotations from reviews "Anonymous Traveler .you wrote that Hotel Facilities are fine (free pick up, good breakfast, place, free Palermo tours, Free trekking tours and Free day trips we add) but "it was the worst experience you had"Pity you didnt write your name so we could check if you really stayed at xxxxx or you just looked at our website. Anyway we have a huge photo guestbook that shows the happiness of our Guests :o)".

Please let us know if you have further concerns.

Best regards, Dan TripAdvisor Hotel Relations Team