I have always loved the website TripAdvisor.com. The details, pictures, reviews are very informative.
I am starting to see a disturbing pattern with them. Hotel employees are gaming the TripAdvisor review system.
On my latest trip many of the hotels that I visited were blatantly eliciting positive reviews on TripAdvisor. This was a constant theme throughout my trip.
The level of sneakiness started to get disturbing.
A typical incident during one of my hotel stays was as follows. My wife and I were headed to dinner. That is when my wife recognized one of the employees who had dropped off a few squares of chocolate earlier in the evening. She approached him raved how thankful she was for the chocolate. My wife is like that. She loves chocolate and the pieces of chocolate had made a big impact on her.
A few hours later when we arrived back at our room, we found a small black box on our bed with a ribbon on top. Next to the box was a business card of the hotel employee and the hand written words, “Please review the myself and the hotel on TripAdvisor”. In the box were some fancy chocolates. My wife raced over to her phone to positively review the hotel and the employee.
The only thing I saw was manipulation.
This continued to be a common theme throughout our trip.
Whenever we had a positive experience with a hotel employee, they immediately asked us to review them on TripAdvisor. Then, when we would see them later, they would always ask us if we had made the review for them yet.
We did have a lovely time at most of these hotels. The employees were incredible. Positive reviews on websites should not be forced. They should be natural. I would hope that TripAdvisor is aware of what is happening and are taking measures to correct such a rash of positive reviews that may have been elicited.