The debate continues over user generated reviews
Written by Karen Bryan
New research shows that UGC is more trusted than travel agents sites. I don’t think that these findings are exactly ground breaking. I would have expected a higher percentage of people it’s only 20% to trust user generated reviews than trust content on travel agents’ sites, that stands at 12%.
I have discussed this topic before. I think that only sensible approach is to use a few several different sources. I think that the system used by Active Hotels, one of the hotel affiliates I use, is a good approach. You can only submit a hotel review if you booked the accommodation through the Active Hotels website and using the email address provided at the time of booking. With sites like Trip Advisor anybody can log in and post a review.
Do you check the system for submitting reviews before you read reviews to help you assess their provenance?
The ActiveHotels (now Booking.com) approach is good in at least ensuring that guests have stayed. However, the downside of it is that there is no mechanism for the hotel management to respond to the comments and therefore any that are really negative tend to get deleted rather than having a proper response posted.
In some senses this is a plus in that it eliminates the comments from total idiots but does leave open the possibility of a hotel removing the valid negative comments. Remember too that it’s in the interests of sites like ActiveHotels/Bookings to get people into hotels ie they are likely to agree to deleting negative comments. Hostelworld.com (used by Ryanair and very popular) even lets management to remove comments and ratings that they don’t like with no checks applied at all. Consequently, the less scrupulous hotels end up with ratings close to 100% whereas more honest places end up around a more typical 70-80%.
Total idiots? If you look at some of the reviews on some sites you’ll find that people have complained that a hotel advertised as being in the country isn’t in the city. Really! I’ve seen several reviews like that.
Best I’ve seen yet though is one couple who didn’t change their watches on arriving in France and managed to spend an entire week one hour out. Now, that wouldn’t matter in most places in the world but in France shops and restaurants close very promptly as you know so when they turned up at a typical UK 1pm for lunch it was actually 2pm. Their list of complaints read like something out of Mr Bean and all blamed on the hotel when in fact all had arisen from their own error in not changing their watches.
I feel a blog posting on this topic coming on :)
Hi
The legal side of such review sites was highlighted in the past day or so on the Times website, please see:
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/news/article1428712.ece
I think the websites do have to work harder at ensuring reviewers have actually stayed at a property, and allow owners to reply quickly and easily, preferably right alongside any critical comments.
Regards
Craig
Craig, thanks for that link to the Times. I stayed at a hotel booked through Active Hotels this weekend have just completed a prettty negative online review questionnaire. The hotel rated an average of 8 out of 10 from 15 reviews on Active Hotels. I would give it 2 or 3. It makes me question the value of reviews as with Active you can only submit a review if you have booked through them and actually stayed at the hotel.