Called
the ‘Google of the travel world’, Tripadvisor.com is an online social media
platform that allows users to book, review and view information about hotels,
restaurants, flights, cruises and other prominent attractions in various
countries. TripAdvisor was established by Steve Kaufer, Carter Nicholas and
Langley Steinert in 2000, headquartering in Needham Massachusetts, USA.
When planning a vacation or a trip, people often find themselves in the inevitable situation of browsing through TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has become one of the most popular internet-based travel company worldwide, attaining about 730 million reviews on 8 million different accommodations and attractions in 2018 alone, generating $1.62 billion USD in revenue.
However, despite its popularity, and despite the company claiming to check over illegitimate or offensive reviews, the ease of creating fake reviews on the website has been proven time and time again. The limit of writing fake reviews was tested by VICE reporter and professional writer Oobah Butler, who managed to make a non-existent restaurant named The Shed the #1 rated restaurant in the whole of London on TripAdvisor just by writing reviews of it on Tripadvisor. Butler displayed the ease of a) Making TripAdvisor think you have a real restaurant, and b) Making you seem better than a Michelin star winning restaurant through reviews.
When planning a vacation or a trip, people often find themselves in the inevitable situation of browsing through TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has become one of the most popular internet-based travel company worldwide, attaining about 730 million reviews on 8 million different accommodations and attractions in 2018 alone, generating $1.62 billion USD in revenue.
However, despite its popularity, and despite the company claiming to check over illegitimate or offensive reviews, the ease of creating fake reviews on the website has been proven time and time again. The limit of writing fake reviews was tested by VICE reporter and professional writer Oobah Butler, who managed to make a non-existent restaurant named The Shed the #1 rated restaurant in the whole of London on TripAdvisor just by writing reviews of it on Tripadvisor. Butler displayed the ease of a) Making TripAdvisor think you have a real restaurant, and b) Making you seem better than a Michelin star winning restaurant through reviews.
Since then, Tripadvisor has denied such claims,
saying that fake reviews could not sway the rating of a real restaurant. In
all, TripAdvisor can be arguably a useful tool to see the overall view of an
attraction, but viewing other websites and information pages on the same attraction
is a must. It is recommended to take everything you see on TripAdvisor with a
general serving of salt.
A conversation that may be more
realistic than we expect.
Wow, really insightful post! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting... Also love your picture of the conversation as well!
ReplyDelete