Online hotel reviews: truth or fiction?
February 7, 2006
Would you write a glowing review of your next hotel in exchange for a discount? Or how about an ocean view?
The New York Times has an article about the tactics used by some hotels in exchange for a positive mention on the online review sites.
A hotel in Key West, Fla., recently offered its guests a 10 percent discount for publishing a rave review on TripAdvisor. We8there.com routinely intercepts reviews submitted by hotel employees and their spouses.
Web site publishers say they have heard about secretive “reputation management” departments at hotels that submit fake reviews from alias e-mail accounts, with typographical errors added for authenticity.
I don’t know which is more bizarre: the thought of a room full of reputation managers faking reviews or the fact they feel the need to mis-spell (is that how you spell it?) entries to make their missives look as if they come from bona fide business travellers.
This is hardly a new tactic, nor one limited to the online space.
Hotels and restaurants have always encouraged customers to write complimentary things about them and to send the results to the major guidebooks.
When I launched a restaurant of the year contest, I received dozen of recommendations for one particular no-hoper grill room. They all arrived in identical envelopes with matching handwriting - the equivalent today of scores of hotel reviews from the same ISP.
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