Travel Review Site Troubles Escalate

As I’ve repeatedly said, the review sites became ripe for fraud due to their fast-waxing prominence together with the dire financial state of the travel industry.  Here are two recent examples:

More bad news at Expedia’s TripAdvisor and Cruise Critic.

Cruise Critic, a part of Expedia’s TripAdvisor brand, has recently come under fire for assisting Royal Caribbean cruises in a highly questionable viral marketing campaign.  Together, they  solicited posters to manipulate reviews on the site in exchange for free cruises and other perks.  Royal Caribbean, allegedly with assistance from Cruise Critic, found prolific users of the site who wrote positively about Royal Caribbean.  Cruise Critic helped Royal Caribbean contact those individuals in order to enlist their complicity.

Expedia’s review sites are certainly not alone and frankly are not the sole cause of the industry’s troubles.

Yelp accused of extortion.

Yelp, a 4 year old website where users share opinions on businesses including restaurants, shopping and entertainment, garnered over 20 million unique viewers last month.

As you may have already read, Yelp has been accused of extorting money from businesses in order to improve their rankings.  Its been squarely alleged that the company manipulated reviews in exchange for garnering $299 monthly advertising campaigns from businesses.  Yelp has of course denied these accusations.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for travel review site woes.

Travel reviews are no longer to be trusted, period.  I feel as wary of them as I would any form of vendor advertising.  Buyer beware is the appurtenant motto.  This industry is in for a huge revamp, sooner better than later, if consumer generated travel reviews are ever to be trusted again.