Last Updated on January 13, 2023
By Jim Ferri
Updated for 2021
Many travelers ask, with good reason, how reliable are TripAdvisor reviews? The answer is “it depends.”
TripAdvisor is a company that has changed travel. It promotes itself as the world’s largest travel site – a place where you can get “trusted advice from real travelers.” But many people wonder just how much you can trust the advice it provides.
You only need to search Google for “fake TripAdvisor reviews” to get a sense of the size of the issue. The more than 3.6 million results that pop up suggest that it’s on the minds of a lot of travelers. On the other hand, those numbers are down about 25% from a decade ago.
It’s unfortunate but obvious: if hoteliers and restaurateurs have the opportunity to boost reservations and revenue by posting fake reviews on TripAdvisor, many are going to do it. As a matter of fact, fake reviews on TripAdvisor – both fake positive reviews posted by the hotels and restaurants or negative reviews by their competitors – have long been a problem.
TripAdvisor Attempting to Curtail Bogus Reviews
To be fair, TripAdvisor, as well as some hotel chains claim to be trying to do something about the issue. And for the past few years they appear to be making some headway. But it’s impossible to stop all bogus reviews. TripAdvisor is usually very closed mouthed as to exactly what it’s doing.
Even though TripAdvisor claims it’s trying to curtail bogus reviews, there’s another issue that travelers need to be aware of. That about hotels that misrepresent themselves on booking sites such as TripAdvisor. It’s basically false advertising.
How this happens is that some hotels, especially outside of North America, will renovate part of their hotel. They then photograph the renovations and put the photos on their website as well as TripAdvisor, Expedia and Travelocity, without advising that not all rooms are as advertised. You book what appears to be a nice room but on arrival find yourself in some dump up on the fourth floor.
The Result of Rushing Through a Booking
It’s happened to me. Several years ago in Venice I needed to spend my last night in a hotel near the bus and train stations in order to catch a very early-morning bus.
I did some quick research and found that TripAdvisor awarded the Alloggi Agli Artisti, a hotel that appeared to suit my needs, 3.7 points out of five. There were negative reviews, of course. But 138 of the reviews said it was very good, and 49 said it was excellent. In my haste I booked it.
When I arrived, however, I was put in small room on the fourth floor (the fifth floor in the U.S.). To make matters worse, there was no elevator.
Also, the carpets in the hall were worn and the bathroom and the shower were down the hallway, not in the room as advertised. Additionally, there was no air-conditioning, hairdryer, in-room safe, etc. as claimed online.
Even worse though, next to some of the negative reviews on TripAdvisor I saw comments from hotel management insulting some reviewers for complaining about these very things (TripAdvisor puts management replies next to negative consumer reviews). Seeing insulting replies from management should warn you never to go near the property.
By the way, the Alloggi Agli Artisti hotel is still open. And judging by the reviews, not a lot has changed.
But I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t use TripAdvisor to try to discern the quality of a hotel. It can, after all, be a valuable resource. But you do need to use it wisely and read the reviews with a bit of cynicism.
A good rule of thumb is to disregard all “over the top” comments, possibly written by the hotels themselves. Also disregard all the very negative comments, which could have been planted by the competition, and focus on the remainder.
You also need to go beyond TripAdvisor reviews and look at what’s said on other sites such as Expedia, Travelocity, Booking.com, Hotels.com, etc. As a side note to clear up any confusion, TripAdvisor used to be owned by Expedia but is now a publicly traded company.
Watch Out For Those Restaurant Reviews
And when using TripAdvisor it’s not just hotels you should be concerned about. Since mobile phones and iPads are also our traveling companions, many travelers also use TripAdvisor to search for restaurants. Remember, however, that some of these restaurant reviews may also be bogus. A positive review may be written by a restaurant’s owner, a negative one by the chef down the street.
And there’s also the issue as to whether or not the place is even still in operation. Keep in mind that while hotels are usually in business at the same location indefinitely, restaurants tend to open and close more often.
While in my original hotel during that same trip in Venice, one evening I used TripAdvisor to search for a good restaurant. I looked up the district of Venice in which I was staying and then wrote down the names and addresses of TripAdvisor’s three top-rated restaurants.
As it turned out the #1- and #2-rated restaurants on TripAdvisor no longer existed. But after walking a bit I did find #3, which turned out to be relatively good, as promised on the site.
I’ve never turned to TripAdvisor … there are so many other options for reviews! I don’t need to state the obvious: consulting with a professional travel consultant with a vast network of colleague. No, I’m thinking of the travel guides which take no advertising. I trust Rick Steves. I trust Fodor’s. I don’t trust the reviews on Trip Advisor. I once saw a review of a tropical property in which the reviewer complained about bugs … there are certain things which are not surprising in travel and bugs in the tropics are one of them.
Don’t know if they are making good, but once I have found this guys selling reviews on tripadvisor, never worked with them
To our readers:
All comments on articles that appear on Never Stop Traveling, both positive and negative, remain as written, unless they are spam or contain offensive material.
In the case of this comment, however, I’ve deleted the web address referenced since I found the site to be a company one can retain to write phony reviews on TripAdvisor.
This is one of the problems that plagues TripAdvisor and demonstrates why you should use caution and common sense when reading any comments on TripAdvisor or other review sites. J.F.
If you visit a restaurant don’t rely on Trip advisor reviews. Most of the people who post are the unhappy, miserable complain without reason, while those guests who has great experience don’t bother to post. I run a restaurant. Our comment cards shows 93% guest satisfaction while Trip advisor comments indicates 40%. So tell me
I wonder if they post all reviews. I have now posted twice a review of a recent stay at a hotel and have yet to see it appear. I definitely think they have their favorites.
Hi Sander,
That’s not a good sign if a site doesn’t post your review – whether it’s pro or con — unless it has been blocked for negative reasons (profanity, attacking another reviewer,spam content, etc.) I’d send an email to the pr/communications person in their corporate offices and ask what’s going on. If you do, could you please update us on their reply and tell us what you’ve done?
Our client have ever written about us on Tripad “We highly appreciate your service” but that comment was not posted and our account was locked
Then we contacted with Tripad but Tripad has explained that the comment about this company is not posted as this company does not have on the Tripad system.
So Tripad does not keep the positive , they just concentrate on advertisement, there are many competitors buy good comment throught many websites. But we did not do that as we respect our clients who wrote true comment about service.
May I ask if Tripadvisor earn commisions or advertisement fees ? I read before someone asked them whether they are a commercial website or not, and they replied they are not and assure fairness.
Besides those mentioned, there is another big issue which Tripadvisor’s forum a very unreliable place to rely for informations. I usually run through all the last few months of forum chat of the place before I travel. I find their moderators very bias and unfair. I notice they favour members who supported the higher price establishments. I notice whenever someone recommend some cheap finds, eg eating places, drivers or hotels, some regular members will appear to start an issue to flame and the moderators will delete the original post with some excuses like “inappropriate” or “gudelines” issue. It’s sad that an established travel forum could choose to be ruined or controlled by some regular members and lose their creditability. I am sure many of the regular members are in the travel industry or related to some establishment, writing there to protect their own interest.
I think in future, travellers will not believe in travel sites forum or reviews if their moderation don’t improve for fairness.
Since tripadvisor monitors the posts very carefully that I think it will be very reliable for those who intend to find information before making a trip.
The debit about whether to trust Trip Advisor or not keeps going but personally I can’t trust Trip Advisor. The reason why I can’t trust them is the because I rather go and talk to actual trip advisor face to face giving me actual information. Another reason why I can’t trust them because certain individuals give mixed emotions about where they stay, and makes you think whether you trust it or not. Having a actual interaction with someone discussing with you about your trip and giving you advise, I rather recommend them over trip advisor. As a hotel manager I would deal with the positive and negative message by sending out a statement, on the company website by thanking them for the feedback and send out recent activities, interactions, and entertainment/Food pictures showing that our hotel brand is a great place to come to to answer all the negative feedback the hotel gets. Also I would tell everyone that our hotel keeps on growing and we keep up to date with the trends that are happening in the hospitality industry.
Expedia does not own TripAdvisor, and I have never gone wrong using TripAdvisor to plan vacations.
I firmly believe that trip advisor is not completely reliable. The site contains both real and fake reviews. There are companies that solicit to hotels where they charge to a couple of hundred dollars a month to post positive reviews. How do I know that? Well I work for hotels and I have personally received those phone calls. For some hotels it may be totally worth it to pay a couple of hundred dollars a month to be on the top of the list but it is totally unethical. Also, there is no way to verify or to prove if the person that wrote a review actually stayed at the hotel.
Sure, there are outright bogus reviews (both positive and negative) that erode the trust in Tripadvisor. I think nowadays users are getting savvy enough to sniff out if things are written more like a marketing push than a real review.
What I have also noticed, as a tourism professional in Berlin, is that many of the tours, attractions, etc that are ranked highest on trip advisor are ones that actively solicit them from their guests. I did a walking tour where at the end most of us had a drink in a nearby pub. The tour guide then went around to each of us with his ipad asking us to write a quick review….. (I later learned that management was paying a bonus to the guide that got the most reviews)
Tripadvisor has tremendous power with business in the top 3 of categories seeing direct results in terms of revenue. Is it any wonder that many of them try to cheat the system.
The other issue is that the reviews are not necessarily representative of the experience. The majority of people will only bother writing if they have either a very good or very bad experience. So good little restaurants (particularly ones mostly frequented by locals – which are usually a good sign) rarely register on Tripadvisor.
Great observations Charlie. Thanks.
As usual, you should check with a variety of sources. I have found that Tripadvisor reviews are just one of several sites that will give you a general idea. To their credit, I think Tripadvisor does try to do a good job…after all, if they fail to do that, then they lose their credibility, and that is the keystone of their business.
Not very reliable I’d say. Tripadvisor aims at serving third-parties interests instead of helping travellers. I wrote a one-star review of a restaurant that is high ranked in Wroclaw, Poland but at which I had a disastrous experience. Altough my review was genuine, it was removed from the website because it contained an allegation of fraud (sic). I found it strange since I’ve already written around 70 reviews (most of which restaurants) and never had such problem. Here’s a link to my Tripadvisor profile: http://www.tripadvisor.com/members/MikeDoviel. So I asked the Support about what went wrong. They replied that it contained a report of review fraud (sic) with no further explanation. I sent a second e-mail to ask for more details, they never bothered to reply. I then realized there was nothing wrong with my review. Tripadvisor just decided to censor it, probably in some effort to damage control the reputation of the restaurant I was reviewing. What’s worse, I denunced to Tripadvisor a review that was obviously fake: a first time reviewer who wrote a five-star review, listing items that were not served and stated “next time you’re around just pop in”. I was surprised to find out that my request was rejected, meaning that Tripadvisor finds this review to be genuine. Since, I’ve stopped writing reviews on Tripadvisor. When I travel, I’d rather ask locals or wander around the city and see for myself than trust Tripadvisor reviews.
Trip Advisor is not pro-traveler. When a business disputes a demonstrably factual review, Trip Advisor simply removes the review with a no-reply email, denying the traveler any opportunity to question their decision.
Thank you Alex. Could please share how you know this for a fact. I, for one, would be quite interested.
After doing a hut-to-hut mt biking trip in Colorado, my experience cried out for a trip advisor review. Long story short, the hut system business brushed off my suggestions that they consider exterminating the mice infestations with “we can’t control mother nature” and “that’s why we have people sign liability waivers”. TA won’t post my review, no matter how soft I revise it. My concern here is the health of hut-users: mice can carry Hantavirus which has a 36-38% mortality rate in humans. the business clearly doesn’t care about this, and TA is too enmeshed in the business’s success to care, either. I’m left believing that TA reviews can’t be trusted from the traveler perspective, they’ve lost credibility with me.
Eric – Thank you for telling us about this first-person experience and the challenges you’ve faced in getting some acknowledgement about the issue.
Jim
I don’t trust TripAdvisor reviews. Most of them are written by business owners or the companies providing this service to the owners.
We have a travel agency in Crete, Greece and I can clearly see that some of our competitors use this kind of service and TripAdvisor publishes the reviews without any problem. Most of thier reviews are posted by persons with only one review and reposted in 6 months again, all the comments looks like advertisements rather than customer review and most of them include some photos downloaded in internet (just a picture of some place without any real person at ithem) and the comments appears periodically, for example 10 comments in 10 days and then they stop for 2-3 weeks and so on. And of course there is no even one negative review there. You don’t need to be an expert to understand that these reviews are paid but for some reason TripAdvisor doesn’t prevent them from posting.
Another problem that we have faced with this company is the rapid decline of reviews accepted for our business since TripAdvisor offered us to join thier new service for booking tours and activities called Bokun and we rejected the offer. We received few emails from our clients complaining that thier reviews have not been approved for some reasons. I don’t believe that this page is reliable as soon as they offer paid services as Bokun and premium status for the restaurants.
And concerning the restaurants, we have some examples in our absolutely touristic area with hundreds of cafeterias and restaurants when the newly opened business has more than a hundred reviews less than in a month after serving the first client. Something that other places are not able to reach even after few years of work.
I’m sorry to hear that, Mary. It sounds like a bad situation.