Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Australian hotel chain fined $2.2 million for manipulating TripAdvisor reviews
Do you check any user reviews when you book a hotel or restaurant?
TripAdvisor is a website that shows users’ reviews of hotels, restaurants, accommodation bookings and other travel-related content. While most of the content is created by the website users, their revenue is generated by advertisement by the hotels and restaurants. It sounds like a well-balanced business model provided that the user reviews are properly shown. Nowadays, hotel staff these days try their very best to get good reviews, or not to get bad ones, because such reviews show up immediately on this or other review websites, which could significantly affect the reputation of the property.
However, some of the properties have made a malicious effort to hide negative reviews. For example, a large Australian hotel chain gave an invalid email address to TripAdvisor for negative reviews. It is a violation of the consumer protection law, and the hotel chain was fined $2.2 million by the federal court.
Now you may wonder if positive reviews were truly contributed by the guests or hotel staff.
Enjoy reading and think how to use or discount the reviews on travel websites.
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