Interesting TRUTH

Fake Online Reviews is Travel Industry's New Trend

Added by antony on Jul 21, 2009 | Visited by 5183 | Voted by 46 persons

If you ever went traveling you’ve most likely checked the Web before choosing a destination and there's a chance that you came across some reviews of hotels you considered stopping at. What catches attention is the fact that all reviews read as though one person wrote them all, but most interesting is that all of them, or at least the biggest part gave an A+ to a hotel or place, with only a few reviews mentioning some drawbacks. With a good advertising like that any hotel will considerably increase its image. But have you ever thought that these reviews could be fake, meaning that someone interested in raising the popularity and image of a certain hotel wrote these reviews or hired people who were ordered to do the job?



This doesn't mean that all hotels are bad, it only points out that nothing is perfect and even luxury hotels with rooms costing a few thousands of dollar a night can have their drawbacks. Some online sources started focusing on revealing the fake reviews that were written just to improve the popularity of a hotel or to simply damage the image of competitors. Thus, the online world of travel got divided into two camps, those who look forward to market their services the legal way and those who need to increase the number of visitors so badly, they get involved into a sort of a dirty play, hoping to dodge the system.



The problem is that users get confused what information is worth trusting and what reviews are misleading. Today there are very few travel websites that can boast good reputation among users worldwide, but even these websites cannot assure 100 percent accurate information, because even on such websites users can come across fake reviews. Travel industry is a billion dollar business, where everyone wants his piece of cake and that piece is not always obtained the honest way, especially when the global economic crisis hit various countries worldwide, having a great impact on travel industry. Although some hoteliers understand the risk of posting misleading information they still consider carrying on with the strategy, even if it could one day have an impact on their reputation.



Some websites advise to be careful when reading online reviews, but how exactly can a user figure out which review is misleading and which one is the real thing? An increasing number of reviews have been marked with red, to make users aware about misleading information. Online users can find advices on the issue advising reading reviews written by experts, for example guidebook writers or professional journalists. Still, this does not completely solve the problem since a lot of journalists can be paid to write positive reviews. Some steps are currently being taken to eliminate suspicious reviews that are meant to game the system. Still, such strategy could lead to marketing some specific hotels and damaging the reputation of others, and it is because travel industry is most of all about money, which means that each traveler is involved in a game that parts people into the lucky and the least fortunate ones. The more money is involved, the fewer chances that a company or agency will stand up for the consumer, which means that trust among customers is steadily turning into an illusion.

