Before my trip to Vietnam I did not use TripAdvisor actively because of several reasons. I found it a commercialized platform with a lot of commuted reactions. It had a lack of authenticity and local preferences and opinions. The best restaurants in my town, for example where not even in the top 5. People would only write a review when the experience was either very good or very bad (a 1 or 5 star rating), which will make the overall ranking less representative. Besides that, it is hard for travellers to make a comparison, because a lot of travellers do not have a basis. Finally, not all people review and some kinds of people are more likely to post reviews than others, which also make it a less valuable review.
However, while traveling in an Asian country, I found it sometimes difficult to choose the best restaurant, tour or accommodation, because a lack of information. There are tons of touring organizations offering the same package, tons of restaurants having the same “best local” dishes and tons of accommodations ensuring you the best sleeping place. I used my lonely planet a lot and also asked local people for advise, but I was looking for more opinions. You really want to make sure that you don’t miss the best spots, so therefore I started using TripAdvisor to gather more information. I spotted the TripAdvisor signs literally everywhere in Vietnam and noticed that businesses are getting more and more dependent of the reviews and ratings. People were bagging me to write a positive review on TripAdvisor and mentioning their name would be even better. After three days I wanted to know why these reviews were so important to the employees. People were not checking TripAdvisor that much, right? Nope, I was absolutely wrong.
TripAdvisor is the worlds largest travel community with more than 60 million unique monthly visitors and over 75 million reviews and opinions. Customer reviews have been increasingly received the attention from various stakeholders (Globalbizresearch, 2015). One of the Easyrider guides tour told me that employees receive bonuses and evaluations based on TripAdvisor reviews. If the customers did not write a comment, it was expected that the customers did not have a great experience, and thus also had a negative impact on evaluations. Bosses were checking the reviews on a daily basis. I started to realize how much power TripAdvisor created. According to the independent study of PR (2012), 87% of users agree that TripAdvisor hotel reviews help them feel more confident in their booking decisions with the fact that 98% of respondents have found TripAdvisor reviews to be accurate of the actual experience while 53 % of respondents do not book a hotel that does not have any reviews on the sites. Eventually hotels are investing more time and dollars on managing the quantity, quality and location of online reviews, with particular attention paid to TripAdvisor (Thales and Leora, 2013:1). But is this what we want? Do you think that TripAdvisor is gaining more and more power? Is this either positive or negative?
Sources:
Globalbizresearch.org. Global Review of Research in Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure Management, “An Online International Research Journal (ISSN: 2311-3189)”, Vol: 1 Issue: 2, 2015.
PR, N., 2012, Survey Finds Half of TripAdvisor Users Will Not Book a Hotel that Has No Reviews, PR Newswire US.
Thales, T., and Leora, K., 2013, Managing Online Reviews on TripAdvisor. Harvard Business School
Thanks for your post, Yvette. Like you noticed, it has some great benefits when you’re in need for information. It is especially suitable when you can’t express yourself easily in foreign languages. Furthermore, I absolutely agree with you on the growing impact that TripAdvisor has nowadays.
However, I also like to stress a downside of this development. A rather new trend is that online reviews are used as a tool for blackmail. Guests in for instance hotels or restaurants demand lower checks, additional services, etc. and threaten the firm with writing bad online reviews. This of course lowers the value of these reviews for ‘consumers’ in two ways. If firms don’t cooperate with these demands, it will face unfair bad reviews. If they do cooperate, there is big chance of overly positive reviews. In case you’re interested, you can find more information (they are however in Dutch) on these two websites:
http://www.emerce.nl/achtergrond/review-chantagemiddel
http://www.missethoreca.nl/restaurant/artikel/2016/7/recensie-chantage-hoe-ga-je-ermee-om-101241655
Wow, this is super interesting to see how big of a power the content of TripAdvisor actually has! Especially not when it comes to using it for planning your trip, but as a blackmailing tool? Seriously, this would never cross my mind and yet, some people do it, unbelievable!
Personally I love travelling, but I hate feeling like a tourist. This includes being treated differently by locals, especially when they try to take as much money from you as possible because you don’t know the real prices behind either food, a taxi ride or souvenirs. Another thing about being a tourist is going only to the super touristic places or restaurants and missing out on the local attractions. Additionally in such places you are almost always surrounded by other tourists, some of them acting in a very stereotypical way which instantly makes your experience worse. I believe that the purpose of going to a foreign country is to get to know the real culture and people it has to offer, and not stay in the best hotels, eat in the best restaurants or only visit the most popular places. Of course it is easier said than done, especially if you do not know any locals to show you around, but there are certainly better ways of going around a new city than blindly following reviews on touristic websites such as TripAdvisor.
I believe that the fact that TripAdvisor is becoming increasingly popular has two opposite consequences. The positive aspect is that it allows local businesses such as restaurants or small B&Bs to get more recognition among tourists that would otherwise not be possible and indeed exposes people who are willing to go a step further to discover the usually less popular destinations around the city. On the other hand, the fact that both customers and owners of these places are more concerned with their own selfish intentions, be it either performing a service only after a positive review was posted or lowering a price with a threat of a bad review, leads to a decreasing credibility of the website that will soon become apparent among its users when they experience such situations themselves.
I have exactly the same, love travelling, but hate feeling like a tourist and I think that a lot of people have the same thoughts about it. This is way I hope that local people will either come up with own initiatives to help the tourist with more authentic tips or tours or that TripAdvisor will implement a separate part of ‘local reviews’. I recently found a really cool website that is offering tours from local persons, you can personalize your tour in the way you want to explore the city; you can check it out if you are interested! ☺ → http://www.showaround.com
Thanks for your reply Jesse. The trend of using online reviews as a tool for blackmail is indeed threatening for online review websites. TripAdvisor implemented some features that will discourage this trend, as you can also read in the article. For example, owners of hotels, restaurants etc. can report blackmail on a platform, but they have to do this before the guest is adding a (negative) review. I think that this is a downside of the platform, because it is really hard for owners to streamline this information that quickly. TripAdvisor also implemented the “red flag” to discourage the trend that owners force customers to only write positive reviews. The red flag is a message by TripAdvisor that highlight the suspicion of fraud of that business. However, it is really hard for TripAdvisor to prove this suspicion.
Hi Yvette, interesting post about Tripadvisor. In my experience I used it a lot of times just to check or confirm information I already had. I knew however that with all review websites, many people only react when it is good or really bad. I think the greater group of people will understand that and will not base a decision on what is said by people on Tripadvisor alone. I agree with Jesse that it customers are very easy with demanding free or extra services because of the fear for companies to receive a bad review. But I also think that many people will use more websites or contacts to verify certain things they find on Tripadvisor. I am really glad the service exists and I however am not so easily shocked by a bad review. I always check it on other websites to be sure.
Hi Diana, thanks for you reply. I agree, but I think it is harder to make a decision when you are at a country of city that is totally new, also in a cultural perspective. Luckily we also have lonely planet and local people!
Hi Yvette, I share somewhat the same experience and opinion with you. This summer I went to New York and wanted to go to the hidden places of the city because I have been to New York multiple times before. The lists on Trip Advisor only contain the most touristic places and so I decided to look for more qualitative blogs from locals instead of the lists of Trip Advisor which are more quantitative oriented since ranking is based on number of reviews. I found a website called the Thrillist which in my opinion is the best trip advisor for young adults you can get for the States. The differences between the lists of Trip Advisor and the Thrillist are that:
1. the Thrillist is compiled by local bloggers who really know the best hidden places you want to discover when you are on holiday.
2. The restaurants, bars, places can not influence the content of this website (only by offering better experience than others)
3. The Thrillist is up to date: every month they compile new lists. For example: best new bars in town, events you have to attend this month, best hidden bars, hotel pools to sneak in etc.
I can sum up so much more positive differences between the two but to come to my point: this kind of information is what we want, isn’t it?
In my opinion TripAdvisor needs to shift to more qualitative lists instead of the quantitative character to maintain the status as “best” tripadvisor. If tripadvisor will do so, their power will be positive because it will stimulate local businesses to be unique and offer tourists a great experience instead of exploit their employees and customers for a higher ranking in the list.
For the people who are curious to the Thrillist here is their website: https://www.thrillist.com/
(Amsterdam, Berlin, London are included as well)
Thanks for your reply Anne Merel. I have never heard of the Thrillist before. I checked out the website and it looks really cool. Actually it looks a bit similar to a website that focus on locals tips from people from Rotterdam: http://www.debuikvanrotterdam.nl, a website that I use a lot. I totally agree with you that TripAdvisor needs to shift to a more qualitative side, before a competitor will do it and become more popular for this reason.
Hi Yvette! Thank you for your interesting blog – it made me feel like I should be writing more reviews about the restaurants/places I go to, but often times I forget or I am too lazy. While I do not really use TripAdvisor myself, my boyfriend often looks at the reviews and this has taken us to many great restaurants. However, we once experienced a restaurant where the reviews on TripAdvisor where amazing, but our experience was far from that. Since TripAdvisor gives rankings to its reviewers (based on how often they review and how helpful the reviews are), I think this can also help in determining how much emphasis to put on a certain review. I indeed do believe TripAdvisor and similar websites are gaining more power, which can be either negative or positive, depending on the reviews. For smaller attractions/restaurants it is a great way to get a larger reputation, and for bigger restaurants or chains this might actually be negative as people look for something more unique.
Hi Yvette, interesting blog!
I used TripAdvisor (and others) a lot during my travels in Australia, Thailand and Vietnam. I noticed the same stuff as you did, especially in Vietnam, where TripAdvisor stickers/posters/banners/flags can be seen everywhere.
Online reviews definitely changed the game here. Sites like Tripadvisor made me able to stay in hostels according to my needs, and I never had to stay in a dirty hostel (what most people think of when you say you stayed in cheap hostels in southeast asia), as I could filter them out quite easily.
While I think that sites like TripAdvisor make you able to stay or eat at nice and clean places, a potential downside is that you’ll always stay at the touristy places, as most locals don’t care about TripAdvisor ratings.
I found that the touristy places are the places where everything is done to maximize profits, not that that’s a bad thing, but in Southeast-Asia it felt to me that the tourists were completely separated from the locals.
While the locals were eating good food at places not listed on TripAdvisor, the tourists were all eating more expensive and not necessarily better food.
I think that in some cases a true local adventure can only be experienced without any expectations gained by reading online reviews.
Hi Yvette, interesting thoughts and perspectives! Thank you for the post. At first I used TripAdvisor a lot, because it is simply a convenient tool for you when you are in a country that you know nothing about. Asking friends’ advises maybe more helpful to get a local view, but it’s also very troubling for your friends and also preference biased. However, after using TripAdvisor in several countries I travelled, I was really unsatisfied and disappointed. When you go to a top five restaurant according to TripAdvisor or simply ones with their logo in the front, it is almost guaranteed that they are filled with travellers. The dishes are designed for foreigners with a supposedly local flavor according to travellers’ imagination. I am also reinforced with this view after checking TripAdvisor restaurants in my local city. I think the idea of TripAdvisor is brilliant and absolutely necessary. But they are gradually losing the points of serving travellers with good advises and are turning into a money making business for its stockholders and rich restaurant owners.
Hey Yvette,
It was really nice to read your blog and I totally agree with your view. I was in Peru last summer and there I noticed (actually for the first time) how important it is for restaurants and other activities there. At one point I went on a track and during the track we got the chance to go rafting. After having a great day they thanked us for being there and handed out little cards with their page on TripAdvisor, obviously the question was if we could write a review. I personally did not like it as much, because if I really enjoy an activity I already write a review automatically. However, besides the reviews that TripAdvisor shows, it is very helpful that the app allows you to download the map of a city and enables you to use if offline. For us that was very useful to be able to get around in the city and still being able to see the activities or restaurants we did like.
Hey Yvette,
It was really nice to read your blog and I totally agree with your view. I was in Peru last summer and there I noticed (actually for the first time) how important it is for restaurants and other activities there. At one point I went on a track and during the track we got the chance to go rafting. After having a great day they thanked us for being there and handed out little cards with their page on TripAdvisor, obviously the question was if we could write a review. I personally did not like it as much, because if I really enjoy an activity I already write a review automatically. However, besides the reviews that TripAdvisor shows, it is very helpful that the app allows you to download the map of a city and enables you to use if offline. For us that was very useful to be able to get around in the city and still being able to see the activities or restaurants we did like.
Thank you for sharing your blog Yvette, it was really interesting to read. I have also visited Vietnam and I totally agree with your thoughts. I actually did really nice tours with a small organization that was really popular among young people. A lot of people advised other people to book a tour at that organization and the positive WOM was great. Also, the Facebookpage was doing really good. I decided to book 5 tours and they were amazing. However, after my tours I have been bombed with Facebook messages to rate them positively on Tripadvisor. Very annoying and too bad that also this organization was attempted to use this forum…