Continuing the discussion we raised in our blog “Should We Introduce User Reviews?” on 19th May 2009, Chris Hallam, has written an excellent article, Sunday Times 26th June, questioning the reliability of hotel reviews on TripAdvisor.

People are telling us User Reviews are too easily faked, there is difficulty in proving  the authenticity of the reviewer and there is no guarantee how genuine a review is.

One West Country Hotelier, who asked not to be named, stated that he wrote every one of his hotel reviews and gained a top 10 position on TripAdvisor, before selling the hotel.  He went on to say, “The system is laughably easy to manipulate“.

Di Beach, who runs the Los Castanos hotel near Ronda, Spain, is another victim of fake posting, mentioned in the Chris Hallam article.

Apparently, a rival hotelier questioned the authenticity of reviews of Di’s hotel. This caused TripAdvisor to block the good reviews and post critical reviews in their place.

Di says “One reviewer claims to have stayed in my hotel in May 2008 and my register shows he didn’t“.

TripAdvisor administrators say they could not say exactly how many properties had been caught abusing their site.

The debate continues. Just how meaningful, fair and reliable are User Reviews? Would your business like The National Pages Business Directory to introduce User Reviews and how much input would you want in moderating reviews on your business?

Of course, businesses would not want negative comments. Assuming a negative comment was actually reliable, just how meaningful would a review service be that allowed a business to remove them?

We are planning introducing a Testimonials page on Gold Profiles, where a business can easily add client Testimonials, with or without reviewer identification. Exactly the same a company could do on their own website. This avoids fraudulent abuse from competitors.

Publishing the identity of the client testimonial would be left to the discretion of the Gold Profile business owner. For example, a name and weblink would be encouraged and carries more conviction than, say, “Mr Smith, London”.

A testimonial service would offer the same degree of assurance as offered on a company website. The National Pages would simply provide the means to make it easy for a business owner to update their Testimonials page.

Many business websites are brochure or static websites, which are difficult for owners to update. A Testimonials page on a Gold Profile would, we feel, offer a useful service to businesses and at no additional charge .