HotelChatter

TA should be very vigilant in making sure all reviews are not PR or Advertising, and mostly the effect on ratings on properties that are artificially promoted through manipulation, it is not fair on good managed properties that should be rewarded for giving good service and keeping well maintained properties..
And certainly the traveling public require honest assessment of the accommodation, certainly overwhelming reviews will counter out false ones, but TA's system relies on the quantity not quality to move properties up or down which is open to manipulation, vigilance again can stop such rigging of the reviews.

REMEMBER CRUISECRITICGATE: CRUISE CRITIC IS OWNED BY TRIPADVISOR: IS THIS A PATTERN?

From Jaunted (Conde Nast):

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/3/16/12635/4598/travel/Royal+Caribbean+Cruises+Has+Web+2.0+Viral+I nfection

Royal Caribbean Cruises Has Web 2.0 Viral Infection

No surprise here: Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has a viral infection. For once, however, it's not the Norovirus but that new-fangled byproduct of Web 2.0, the viral marketing infiltration. According to Consumerist, a group of fifty "Royal Champions" was outed by their own creator, the Customer Insight Group, as being a successful project whereby frequent positive cruise commenting on sites such as CruiseCritic was rewarded with free cruises and other perks.
So what's the big deal? Well, it seems that the "Royal Champions" weren't always up front about their status as compensated reviewers, effectively misleading readers of CruiseCritic forums with their positive comments. Add to this the fact that CruiseCritic admins assisted Royal Caribbean in choosing the fifty, with one of the stipulations being quantity of posts, "with many having over 10,000 message board posts on various Royal Caribbean topics." From here, the hole just gets deeper.
Now that many RC fans feel slighted at not having made the ranks and most everyone else is disgusted at the covert trade of cruising for happy juicing, the trustworthiness of such forums is under fire.
Due to CruiseCritic's ownership by TripAdvisor, which is in turn under the Expedia blanket of travel sites, a viral marketing stunt gone awry could possibly continue to negatively ripple. Does news like this affect your ability to trust good reviews on travel sites, or do you already consider yourself an excellent shill-spotter enough to weed out the solicited from the unsolicited? While this whole ordeal is mired in serious muckety-muck, let's hope it serves as a lesson for future viral marketers and as an argument for transparency.

Hello to all.... A question...Do you think I can take a lawyer against Tripadvisor? I mean...In Europe you cannot publish anything that offends someone or you must pay a lot of money but Tripadvisor published a very offensive comment .

In this comment the anonymous wrote: "xxxxx treated us terribly. He lied to us, stereotyped us, screamed at us, and worst of all - threatned us. It was insane and scary.

xxxxxx cares so much about his reputation, it's a little crazy. You can even find part of his website online where he literally finds every negative review ever written about him, and rebutts the negative points. I'm sure this one will be there soon, and I'm sure he will make up some crazy reasoning like he does with everyone else. "

This is of course totally false and should be considered VERY OFFENSIVE in Europe and for this reason not legal you cannot publish that. In Europe we call it: DEFAMATION....especially if it's made by an ANONYMOUS person...Do you think I should take a Lawyer?

Tripadvisor accepts this kind of ANONYMOUS comments made by anonymous persons that cannot prove they really stayed in the places (that has a name and an adress...so no anonymous) they reviewed.This is bad I think and not really legal

Tripadvisor publishes without investigating these type of comments and anytime a hotel or a Guesthouse want to reply...we have a lot of problems cause "we don't follow their Criterias"!!!..WHICH Criterias if they accept this type of offensive comments made by some Anonymous?...We also received some Fake comments by persons that were supposed to be with us in the period of our Seasonal Clousure!!!...We wrote that to Tripadvisor and Tripadvisor didn't want to move away the comment!!!...We needed 1 month to demostrate that we were closed!!!...But I mean...they consider more comments made by ANONYMOUS than reply made by HOTELS with NAME and ADRESS!..This is terrible!

What's your advise?
Thanks a lot to all
If you want I can also give you the link of this comment

This is the Reply made by tripadvisor !!!! What "Criteria do they have? They publish anonymous defamation and they don't accept our reply (NOT Anonymous!)

Dear Giloc,

Thank you for taking the time to write a management response on TripAdvisor.

Unfortunately, we cannot publish your response because it does not meet our posting criteria. We look forward to receiving your edited and resubmitted response through our management response form.

Please see the management response guidelines posted on our site at:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/userrev_mgmt_rsp_rules.html

We do not post management responses that contain quotations from reviews "Anonymous Traveler .you wrote that Hotel Facilities are fine (free pick up, good breakfast, place, free Palermo tours, Free trekking tours and Free day trips we add) but "it was the worst experience you had"Pity you didnt write your name so we could check if you really stayed at xxxxx or you just looked at our website.
Anyway we have a huge photo guestbook that shows the happiness of our Guests :o)".

Please let us know if you have further concerns.

Best regards,
Dan
TripAdvisor Hotel Relations Team

TripAdvisor takes any "review" from anyone - and does not care about the hotel properties -  I have rebutted a false and malicious review from a disgruntled spring breaker - 3 times - and each times it gets returned to me for "not meeting their guidelines..."   On the other hand, the customers can freely post defamatory and malicious remarks.   Our new strategy is to sue the customer - for false and defamatory remarks.   Secondly - keep an eye on the lawsuit filed by 24grille LLC vs. Tripadvisor - that will be our next step.   If there are thousands little nuisance lawsuits falling onto Tripadvisor, they will stop siding with people who do not know how to behave in a public lodging, or is looking for something free.   Their main objective seems to be  to grow their mailing list and thereby get people to book thru their site.

Not all of the traveling public are hones and give honest assessment of the accomodation - most of the negative reviews are from disgruntled customers who either had buyers remorse, thought they paid too much - or could not live within the rules of the establishment.

The false and defamatory "reivews" are much more prevalent that properties trying to post fake reviews.
Tripadviser needs a serious lawsuit to curb the unbelievable damage they do to the hotel economy - while they seem to be trying to rake in commissions - the property has the responsibility and work - and for the commission they earn - they do very little.

Check out these sites to see how innkeepers feel about Tripadvisor:

http://www.travelblog.org/Topics/12462-11.html
http://www.ihatetripadvisor.org.uk