By now, it has become a matter of practice: when we are traveling and need to choose a restaurant or hotel, we automatically rely on our smartphone and Tripadvisor (the first source of information for 67% of Italians, from Nielsen study).
Born in 2000 reached its maturity in 2004 and to date has 350 million unique visitors each month, more than 290 million reviews and opinions related to 5.3 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions in 47 countries.
A site that alone was thus able to Changing consumer behavior and creating a new market. And as is often the case with success and great public outreach, problems began. First the rifts between competing merchants who were giving each other negative reviews, then the leap to the next level: agencies specializing in "social optimization" or "web reputation" that set up a real businness, offering packages of positive and/or negative reviews, obviously fake.
An example from a business offer email:
"... we offer you packages of genuine reviews written by real potential users. The list is as follows:
10 reviews 70€.
20 reviews 130€
30 reviews €200
We will also strive to sell the service to only one customer per location. Because we offer and demand seriousness and fairness."
Apart from the great sense of self-mockery of the person who wrote this email, it should be noted that the prices are really low, considering that For the average business establishment 30 reviews significantly shifts the rating. Given the popular prices, therefore, the doubt arises that the market is flooded with such offers and that there are indeed many merchants who accept these kinds of proposals.
The consequences for the veracity of the rating of the next restaurant or hotel you search on Tripadvisor I leave to your imagination. But when unfair competition activities are compounded by hoaxes then the situation gets really complicated.
Federalberghi recently reported a Tripadvisor page reviewing theRegency Hotel in Rome, a facility that was actually closed in 2007. We can also mention the case of the Lugano kebab shop which turns out to be the best restaurant in town. Or Oscar's, a nonexistent eatery that had managed to rank 27th among the most recommended restaurants in Brixham, Devon. Or the review of a certain Joseph Bethlehem on a fictitious The Bethlehem Caves Hotel, in which among other things one complained about the noisy heating system that reminded one of an ox and a donkey. Or more simply a review of a restaurant in which the speaker smoothly declares that he has never been there.
All cases collected by a Facebook group (Owl? No thanks!) consisting of more than 2,000 people employed in various capacities in the tourism sector who have long complained about the oddities of A system on which their working lives depend, deciding the success or failure of a business in a way they deem opaque (and we used an understatement). In support of this argument comes the research firm Gartner, who in an independent study Estimates around 10-15% the number of fake reviews.
The resounding 500,000 euro fine imposed in December 2014 on Tripadvisor by the Antitrust Authority on the grounds that the company "Spreads misleading information about the sources of reviews (...) adopting Inadequate control tools and procedures to counter the phenomenon of fake reviews. In particular, TripAdvisor advertises its business through commercial claims that, in a particularly assertive manner, emphasize the authentic and genuine nature of reviews, thereby leading consumers to believe that the information is always trustworthy as an expression of real tourist experiences."
Fine that the Regional Administrative Court later annulled on equally interesting grounds. In fact, the ruling states that "Tripadvisor has never asserted that all reviews are true, rather recalling the impossibility of capillary control and inviting consideration of 'trends' in reviews and not individual contributions."
Thus, this is a real crisis of credibility that undermines the whole service offered by the portal at its foundations: If the reviews are not authentic, spontaneous, peer-to-peer (user to user) then why would a person consult Tripadvisor to choose a restaurant to dine at or a hotel to sleep in?
The response of the multinational company relies on two factors: a 300-person content veracity control department; and a software algorithm that verifies the trustworthiness of each new review.
Tripadvisor also states that users should not look at individual ratings, but rely on the number of pellets, that is, the overall approval rating obtained by the business in question, the result of a large number of reviews. But we have seen how easy and cheap it is to buy packages of fake reviews. Thus, the company's response is not let's say armored, and it continues to show the side of many attacks, which we must admit are shareable, especially because we are talking about the reliability of a service that is now a standard in one of the richest sectors of the global economy.
In this crisis, Tripadvisor will be able to maintain its brand equity without making structural changes to one's system? This is hard to believe, because algorithms and controllers are always fallible; the only way might be to Make certain the identity of each reviewer, rejecting nicknames and at least hooking it to the person's social profile. This would provide some more certainty and, more importantly, would allow one to ask for reasons for suspicious reviews or to carry out appropriate verification activities.
Sources:
Blog.zoorate.com
Corriere.co.uk/economics
Ttgitalia.com
Republic.co.uk/economics
