The UK’s advertising watchdog has found TripAdvisor to be in breach of advertising regulations, saying the site cannot guarantee the authenticity of reviews.
The ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) comes after several complaints were made about TripAdvisor reviews, with accusations that some businesses, and even guests, were putting up fake comments. After reviewing the complaints in July 2011, ASA has found that although TripAdvisor used advanced and highly effective fraud detection systems, the site couldn’t ensure all its content was genuine. “We told TripAdvisor not to claim or imply that all the reviews that appeared on the website were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted.”
TripAdvisor responded to the ruling with a statement: “We think this ruling flies in the face of common sense and is unrealistic in its expectations from sites like ours. ASA has taken a highly technical view around some marketing copy that was used in a limited capacity; complaints were upheld on the basis that we could not provide 100% certainty that every single review on the site was written by a real traveller and could be trusted. No system, verified or not, could provide this.”
However, consequently, TripAdvisor in the UK has changed the wording in its advertising from ‘the world’s most trusted travel advice’ to ‘the world’s largest travel site’.
In South Africa and the US, TripAdvisor still advertises as offering the world’s most trusted travel advice.
Meanwhile, a recent PhoCusWright study showed 98% of respondents found TripAdvisor hotel reviews to be accurate about the actual experience. “We are the world’s largest travel site and we have confidence that the 50 million users who come to our site every month trust the reviews they read on TripAdvisor, which is why they keep coming back to us in increasingly larger numbers to plan and have the perfect trip.”
Dorine Reinstein
