TripAdvisor is refuting claims by consumer rights group Which? that it has been failing to stop fake and suspicious five-star hotel reviews. It says an investigation by Which? is based on a ‘flawed understanding of fake review patterns’ and relies on ‘too many assumptions, and too little data’.
What did Which? investigate?
It analysed 247,277 TripAdvisor reviews of the top 10 highest ranked hotels, by travellers, in London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Cape Town, Punta Cana, Jordan, Las Vegas and Cairo, plus 10 Premier Inns and 10 Travelodges in London (but we’ll come to those later). It compared the proportion of first-time three-star reviews, arguing that these are rarely faked, against the proportion of first-time reviewers who left five-star reviews.

What did the investigation find?
It found multiple cases where the number of five-star reviews made by first-time reviewers were significantly higher than the number of three-star reviews. For example, at the highest rated hotel in Cairo 79% of five-star reviews were left by profiles that had no other contributions on the site, compared with 14% for three-star reviews. Shortly after Which? shared its findings, TripAdvisor removed reviews from the property and it lost its status as the official ‘best hotel in Cairo’. Which? Travel reported 15 of the worst cases to TripAdvisor, which admitted that 14 of these had already been caught with fake positive reviews in the last year.

What did it conclude?
Which? believes this research raises a number of serious issues with reviews on TripAdvisor.
“Reviews are not verified and therefore it is not clear whether reviewers have even stayed at a hotel when they rate it. Travellers do not know whether hotels have been trying to cheat the system,” it said.
“Despite 14 of the hotels flagged having had at least one suspicious review removed in the last year, none of them carried any kind of warning at the time Which? looked. And TripAdvisor’s most serious warning – the red badge – remains on hotel sites for just a matter of weeks.”