Widespread and highly sophisticated. Review fraud is a huge business and no you cannot spot fake reviews.

Widespread and highly sophisticated. Review fraud is a huge business and no you cannot spot fake reviews.
How do you separate honest reviews from dishonest ones? A long-time passion of mine, travel review scam is something I’ve written about for a long time, and dare I say I’m even known for. There are recent changes in the travel review community. Competition and economic uncertainty continue to give rise to a desire to change the outcome of all-important […]
by Rob
A survey this week from Expedia says that us travelers are hell-bent on attaining travel deals. So much so that their study of nearly 1,000 U.S. travelers indicated that 60% of trips are based simply on finding a good enough deal. Survey methodology Funny thing though. When I tried to read the actual survey results on my own (I’m […]
Thirteen Honolulu hotels were mentioned on the Bed Bug Registry site as having problems with the dreaded creature. Is the problem real or just a way to damage a hotel’s reputation? As we pointed out in our last report, references to “bed bugs” have grown tremendously on U.S. TripAdvisor reviews. If bed bugs are mentioned in a hotel review, […]
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 […]
Two new issues are adding fuel to the fire surrounding rampant travel review fraud, and may help bring the matter to a head, sooner than later. 1. Yelp Class Action lawsuit. Yelp became the subject of a class action lawsuit this week in a filing that asserts that the company used extortion by demanding monthly payments (in the form […]
Consumer beware. Hospitality marketing firms are promoting their ability to concoct systematic fake reviews to improve a hotel’s rating and lambaste the competitors. Consumers, however, are poised to be hurt the worst. Can you spot these fake reviews? I assert, definitely not. The wide-spread belief that real reviews can be sorted from the bogus is rapidly changing through more […]
There’s a huge shift afoot in travel reviews; one you won’t want to miss. Today’s post covers what it means to the travel consumer. If you’d like to see my analysis of what it means for your business, I invite you to read more about it on my other site, TechSpokes. “Places” on Google Maps now incorporates extremely useful […]
by Rob
Can Oyster Reviews keep its pearl intact in spite of the reduction in staff? After only four months of operation, media reports have announced that between one-third to three-quarters of their employees were given the pink slip this week. The news that this professional hotel review site is in dire straits is bad news for travelers looking for reviews […]
When I wrote recently about Filterstream, it was to tell you about how it allowed hotels to show you only those TripAdvisor reviews that made them look good. The problem is, that entirely subverted TripAdvisor’s integrity. At the time, I checked with our contact at TripAdvisor, who said: “We have no comment for now on the Filter Stream widget.” On […]
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