The Backlash Against Fake Review Culture

The Backlash Against Fake Review Culture

 

The Internet is littered with opinions. From forum comments to Youtube diatribes to Yelp reviews, separating fact from fiction is challenging; and if you’re in the hospitality industry, this deluge of opinions can have particularly serious implications for your business.

One estimate says that around 90% of consumers check online reviews before committing to a purchase.

This (among other things) has led to a culture of fake reviews. Fake reviews come in many formats: hiring clickbank workers to write glowing reviews, opinion spamming, slanting customer reviews with incentives, etc. An entire cottage industry has sprung up around the the fabrication reviews.

This doesn’t always work in the favour of a business, though. Sometimes people have a bone to pick and take out their anger through an unwarranted rant. The reputational costs for a business (especially a small one) can be high. Some people don’t travel often and their negative reviews are a function of unreasonable expectations, not some flaw in a product, hotel or experience.

The bottom line is that a lot of online reviews can’t be trusted. This, however, may be starting to change. Regulations are clamping down and a few innovative companies have cropped up to solve the problem.

Amazon has started taking fake reviewers to court, while Yelp has a dedicated team for vetting reviews and sniffing out falsehood. In the hospitality industry, TripAdvisor is the undisputed leader, but their response to fake reviews has been slightly less robust.

Visit their site and you’ll see extensive guidelines about fake review moderation and how to spot fake reviews from the user’s end. A spokesperson for the company maintains that Tripadvisor ‘Is the industry leader in review fraud detection, and we work tirelessly in an effort to stay one step ahead of the fraudsters.’

This is a tough thing to pin down empirically, but it’s not hard to argue that Tripadvisor is a few steps behind the curve either. One company that has stepped into this void is TripExpert.

TripExpert took a page out of RottenTomatoes’ playbook. Instead of allowing a crowdsourced free-for-all, they aggregate reviews by trusted sources only.

TripExpert is predicated on the idea that people value authentic information. They’re positioning themselves as an objective and trustworthy travel planning guide.

Another notable company taking a stab at this problem is Oyster, who sends private investigators to each individual property to provide unvarnished feedback for the public. They ‘inspect in person – just like your mother-in-law would.’

Oyster even has a section on their website dedicated to exposing misleading photographs or other deceptions. It’s a special flavor of schadenfreude.

Neither of these companies is a perfect solution, however. TripAdvisor still dwarfs companies like TripExpert, and Oyster has a few issues with scaling. But the fact that they exist (along with the general trend against fake reviews) is an indication that the days of unabated fake reviews are coming to an end.

Sources:

1 – Invesp

2 – Blog: Google business & local search

3 – Time Magazine

4 – TripAdvisor

5 – TripExpert

6 – Oyster