• Home
  • Hawaii Travel News
  • Travel Tips
  • Hawaii Deals
  • Culture and Events
  • Kudos
  • Featured Posts

Beat of Hawaii

Hawaii Travel News, Tips, Culture, Events, And Deals.

Bed Bugs And Rats Make Compelling Travel Reviews

March 24, 2010 by Beat of Hawaii

Unscrupulous authors of fraudulent travel reviews are obviously well aware of our human nature.  Unmoved by a genteel approach to why we should or shouldn’t stay at a given hotel, they now appear to be baiting us with the cursed words potential visitors fear most.

Bed bugs and rodents.

When I read hotel reviews, I need only hear these words mentioned once to immediately go to the next accommodation choice without looking back.

TripAdvisor’s unscientific research

TripAdvisor analyzed its January and February U.S.  hotel reviews, and found that reviewers mentioned the word “rat” 31% more times than a year ago. As USA Today’s Barbara De Lollis pointed out, this was far from scientific.  That having been said, however, it got me thinking about whether the rats were of the rodent or human variety.

Beat of Hawaii’s unscientific research

I searched for the term “rat” on Tripadvisor.com and found 72 pages of results in the past year compared to 26 pages in the prior year. That indicated an increase of nearly 300%, rather than the 31% shown above.

My attention then turned to bed bugs.  I did the same search for that term and found 44 pages of results.  In the prior year, there were only 8 pages of results for “bed bug.”  I can only conclude that the problem or reporting of hotel bed bugs has either increased by 550% percent in the past year, or that professionally crafted fraudulent reviews are making great use of our worst hotel fears.

On a side-note, I was surprised that not one comment on USA Today even alluded to the possibility that the problem was with rats of the human kind. That seems to say that while the travel industry is well aware of the review fraud issue, it has still not become widely known outside the business.

Comments.

Subscribe to our email updates.

 

Disclosure: We receive a small commission on purchases from some of the links on Beat of Hawaii. These links cost you nothing and provide income necessary to offer our website to you. Mahalo! Privacy Policy and Disclosures.

Filed Under: Hawaii Travel News, Travel Tips Tagged With: hotel reviews, tripadvisor, tripadvisor reviews

Get Breaking Hawaii Travel News First

By submitting this form, I consent to receive communications and agree to Beat of Hawaii's Privacy Policy.

Loading

Comments

  1. geronimo says

    March 27, 2010 at 5:46 pm

    I see you’re not all too pleased with trip advisor. You’re right about the fake hotel reviews but the problem is bigger.

    Many of the travel articles that were initially written were/are fake as well. They were written by content writers. People who had never been to a place, rather copying from other sources.

    Many forum posts are fake. Initially some were trip advisor’s doing, baiting with bogus vacation questions to infiltrate the search engines. Not any more, today the fakes are reviewers building cred so that their hotel reviews look better, or trying to illicit reviews for a business, or getting the word out on a business. Fine for trip advisor though. Content volume is the bottom line.

    Condo resorts have more fake reviews that hotels. Condo owners are a much huger problem than hoteliers. Condo owners will go after hotels who compete with them and go after other condos. There are 200x more condo owners than hoteliers.

    Having said that, it’s not all bad. There is good information on there if you know how to sift through the crap. Isn’t that true of many web sites?

Get Breaking Hawaii Travel News First

By submitting this form, I consent to receive communications and agree to Beat of Hawaii's Privacy Policy.

Loading

Most popular on Beat of Hawaii

  • When three Hawaii flights to/from San Diego, all experienced flight diversions crossing the Pacific. What causes these flight diversions? Within 48-Hours, 3 Alaska Air Hawaii Flights Divert Over Pacific

    86 Comments

  • Hawaiian Airlines flight diversion makes 7 total in just 2 weeks. Hawaiian Joins Mid-Air Diversions | Now 7 In Three Weeks

    42 Comments

  • Should Maui Visitors Be Subject To $1,000 Fine For This?

    122 Comments

  • Maui Visitors and Residents Square Off Starting Here Maui Visitors and Residents Square Off Starting Here

    299 Comments

  • TSA Issues Warning About Hawaii Airports This Summer Why Hawaii Airports Are A Hot Mess Now

    32 Comments

  • Hawaiian Airlines 789 Dreamliner $700 Fare Change On “No-Change-Fee” $100 Hawaii Airfare

    56 Comments

Home » News » Hawaii Travel News » Bed Bugs And Rats Make Compelling Travel Reviews

Beat of Hawaii featured in

TripAdvisor
Budget Travel
Frommer's
USA Today
NBC News
The Seattle Time
ABC News
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Privacy
  • Disclosures

Copyright © 2023 · Beat Of Hawaii. All Rights Reserved.

sponsored

Aloha, Adventurer!

Stay Informed, Stay Inspired

Stay ahead with the latest Hawaiian travel news and exclusive deals. Subscribe to our newsletter and let the islands come to you.

By submitting this form, I consent to receive communications and agree to Beat of Hawaii's Privacy Policy.

Loading
×