My friend Darren at Travel Rants just posted about ‘hotel review contests’ and related fraud.This is very timely, since it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
I’m a huge proponent of ethically encouraging hotel reviews. Guest feedback – both good and bad – is important for improving hotels and empowering travelers. Even TripAdvisor recommends hotels ask guests for feedback.
But I strongly oppose any attempt to coerce opinion. Exchanging a bottle of champagne for a positive review is inappropriate.
Regardless of what you define as ‘ethically encouraging reviews’ – the dilemma we face as hotel marketers is very clear. We need good rankings to attract more guests. But if your competitors are unfairly obtaining positive reviews, it puts your ethical marketing campaign to a big disadvantage.
What are you to do?
I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on these questions:
- How do you define hotel review fraud?
- How should hotel review websites like TripAdvisor fight ‘undercover’ fraud?
- How can we as hotel marketers combat this type of fraud?
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- The top user-written review sites in Europe
- New Free E-Course: 5 Days to Better Hotel Internet Marketing
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- Best of Hotel Marketing Strategies 2009
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m a hotelier. I have some good reviews on TripAdvisor. I ask feedback to my guests, but I don’t give any bottle of champagne for good reviews. I just say them to tell about their journey in my hotel as I know that people usually write reviews when they haven’t spent a good holiday. If your journey was good, you don’t need to tell it to the world!
On the contrary, when your journey wasn’t good…your revenge could be there…online waiting for your bad review.
I think that fraud reviews could be worst those by your competitors if TripAdvisor & C. will keep on accepting reviews without any verification of your journey in that hotel.
But it is also true that not every hotel is in travel portal like booking.com or Venere (in Italy). For this reason, the only way to have reviews is TripAdvisor.
PS. I hope my English is still good…and understandable. Sorry for any mistake!
Dear Josiah,
Greetings from Thailand!
Thank you for the good topic!
I am hotelier in charge of the online marketing. My colleague and I have answered to your questions.
1. How do you define hotel review fraud?
We have several tips on how to define the fraud on a review.
The first and basic principle is inspecting the place posting review fraud, and to know the level of service, the kind of rooms and facilities.
The guest standing and level of expectation: Guest paying 30$ a night will be very happy with basic services and will most likely write very positive review even though the service he received is much lower then what high end facilities offer. These high end (luxury) will have to handle guests with higher expectations who most of the time are used to travel and stay in luxury hotels. These guests will of course compare with their previous experience.
According to the period of the year (low, mid, high, peak season) we can forecast the occupancy of the competitors and forecast the average number of reviews that their guests might post.
If in the previous reviews the guests mentioned that the owners or managers asked them to post good reviews in exchange of complimentary drinks or dinners, we can imagine this facility might be more suspicious and likely to post fake or fraudulent reviews.
Fraud review could be managers or owners asking to post fake reviews regarding hotels that are directly in competition with them and post a bad comment about a fake stay. Unfortunately, tripadvisor does not allow the hoteliers to send them the proof that this guest in question has never stayed with them.
2. How should hotel review websites like TripAdvisor fight ‘undercover’ fraud?
I think that the best way is to inspect the places a kind of mystery guest’s evaluation and see how its matching with the comments posted previously.
Should be mandatory for travelers to publish their full name and contact email in order the hotelier to prove if whether or not the guest has really stayed in his hotel. This will also give the possibility to recontact the guest privately in case of unsatisfaction, complains or even accusations.
3. How can we as hotel marketers combat this type of fraud?
Try to promote a genuine and transparent competition among their area market (destination).