Fake Reviews: How to Spot Them and What Travel Portals Do About Them
When choosing their accommodation for a vacation, many people nowadays are heavily influenced by the reviews of other travelers. However, these can be fake - how to recognize them and what travel portals are doing about fake reviews.
Today, when looking for a hotel room, vacation rental, or other accommodation, most people check out the reviews left by other travelers before booking.
Especially among younger people, the vast majority trust customer reviews, as a study by IUBH International University shows. According to the study, online reviews play an important or very important role for 83 percent of the 18 to 28-year-old group when making a booking decision.
Accommodations that have serious complaints from other guests or generally low ratings find it increasingly difficult to compete. Correcting the issues and hoping for better future reviews can be very laborious and may not even work.
It's easier to buy top reviews. This can now be done quickly and relatively cheaply through agencies specializing in this service.
What are fake reviews and how common are they?
'Top reviews, perfectly tailored to your business. Representative, serious, and reliable,' advertises a major German provider for its reviews, which interested parties can purchase for less than 10 euros per review. Customers are promised up to 30 percent more revenue with the help of purchased positive reviews.
According to company information, the reviews are written by over 165,000 real reviewers. Individually, these purchased reviews differ little from genuine ones and are more widespread than some might think.
The mentioned review agency alone advertises having published more than 850,000 reviews. Last year, the EU Commission released a study, showing that the reliability of reviews was questioned in two-thirds of the analyzed online shops, marketplaces, booking websites, search engines, and price comparison services.
For 2022, Amazon, one of the world's largest online marketplaces, reported preventing more than 200 million suspected fake reviews. Like Amazon, travel portals are also affected by suspected fake reviews. The exact number is not clear, as there are no official statistics, as explained by the Consumer Center of Lower Saxony upon request.
Providers like Booking or Holidaycheck claim to have security teams that examine posted reviews for potential fraud.
What do travel portals do about fake reviews?
The ability to leave reviews on well-known travel portals varies greatly. For example, on Booking, only so-called verified users can leave a review. Verified means 'only customers who have actually booked and stayed at an accommodation on Booking.com can leave a review,' as explained by the provider upon request. On Holidaycheck, anyone can leave their opinion about an accommodation.
The audit system for reviews on Holidaycheck is correspondingly extensive, examining their authenticity. According to their own information, 7 percent of all reviews are not published because they are potential fakes. If a review is left by a traveler who booked through Holidaycheck or can provide proof of their booking, these reviews receive an additional indication.
Since only travelers who booked through the portal can leave reviews on Booking, the provider claims there are only extremely rare cases of suspected fake reviews. If the suspicion is confirmed, the review is removed. Reviews containing 'obscenities or other forms of threatening language' are not published at all, as Booking explains upon request from bettercities.net.
In the fight against fake reviews, Holidaycheck has already sued one of the larger review agencies and won. However, this hasn't changed much, as legally only negative fake reviews are currently significant, since they can be classified as defamation or slander.
How do I recognize fake reviews?
So, what should you do when, in a sense, the hands of travel portals are currently still somewhat tied? Even if an individual fake review is difficult to identify as such, there are, according to the Consumer Center NRW, signs that can indicate fake reviews.
- 'Too good to be true? Then it isn't,' says the Consumer Center. If you can't find any negative or at least neutral reviews among a myriad of positive ones, travelers should be skeptical.
- Skepticism should also be applied when the accommodation has very few reviews. Exclusively excellent reviews are then hardly meaningful.
- Compare reviews on different portals or use search engines and similar resources to verify the provided information.
- Click on the profile of reviewers that seem dubious. If these profiles only have positive reviews or many reviews within a short period, it could indicate falsifications.
- If the wording of a review seems odd, enter the entire text into a search engine to see if it appears unchanged on other portals. This can also be a sign of a fake.
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