Surely almost every modern person heard about reviews from TripAdvisor or saw a funny owl pasted on the door of a restaurant or store. TripAdvisor has been collecting reviews about places and various interesting places from around the world for more than 15 years. How it works?
What is TripAdvisor?
Today it is the largest travel site in the world. Collects and publishes TripAdvisor reviews of hotels, restaurants, shops and other establishments around the globe. This allows travelers to prepare for the trip and learn in advance about all the nuances and pitfalls that await them in a particular country. Reviews from TripAdvisor help tourists make the right decision in matters of sleeping, choosing an airline and visiting entertainment venues and find the most attractive offers at competitive prices.
Portal Statistics
According to information for 2018, the site has posted nearly 700 million reviews and opinions on almost 8 million different objects. These are hotels, airlines, attractions and restaurants. TripAdvisor collects information with prices from more than 200 sites and allows you to compare prices without switching between different tabs and significantly saving time.
Almost 50 countries cooperate with the site, so travelers from all over the world can easily join the community and leave a review on the TripAdvisor about a hotel, restaurant or airline.
The site’s popularity is growing; more than 400 million new visitors visit it every month.
"Know more. Book easier. Travel better."
- the slogan of the portal.
Site policy
Anyone concerned can write a review on TripAdvisor about a hotel, restaurant, store or attraction. This approach has both advantages and disadvantages. For example, how to deal with the publication of dishonest, purchased responses? Reviews from TripAdvisor are now respected and places appreciated on the site gain more credibility and popularity than unknown or criticized ones. Of course, the simplicity of publishing reviews and accessibility make the site vulnerable to dishonest companies that buy flattering reviews for money or, on the contrary, order negative reviews for their competitors. To avoid inaccurate publications, reviews on TripAdvisor must comply with several principles developed by the site.
- The best advice a traveler can only get from an equally simple traveler.
To comply with this principle, anyone can leave a review on TripAdvisor. Over the 15 years of the site’s existence, this opportunity has been used more than 500 million times. The site believes that every review is sincere and honest.
- Everyone has the right to write.
"TripAdvisor" does not divide its users into rich and poor, does not give preference to certain places. Each person has the right to share his opinion about a particular institution in order to leave a review, it is not necessary to present a check and prove the fact of his visit. In order to track the veracity, the author must confirm the validity of his recall before sending. After that, the text is sent for moderation.
- Everyone must abide by the rules of the site, those who violate them must be punished.
15 years - that’s how many people write reviews on TripAdvisor - quite a long time. Of course, during this period, the site was faced with fraudulent and unscrupulous publications. By fraud, the site administration means leaving positive false reviews by company employees or persons doing it on behalf of and leaving negative reviews about competitors. Such actions are contrary to the terms of use of the site and laws on the protection of consumer rights and competition.
At the same time, there are very few cases of leaving false reviews by uninterested persons. If the client, for any reason, slandered the company, the company representative may appeal the review discrediting his reputation.
Scam Policy
Anyone can write a review on TripAdvisor. But if the administration considers the review fraudulent, it will be immediately deleted. The TripAdvisor team calls itself fraud detection specialists. For 15 years, the site has developed a special algorithm that distinguishes ordinary reviews from custom ones.
Thus, each text passes a special automatic filter before publication. The algorithm is so well-developed that the TripAdvisor reviews are processed with incredible speed and accuracy.
The text checks not only a special algorithm, but also living people. The TripAdvisor reviewer employs over 300 people worldwide. They help the system identify what is written to order and manage the content of materials.
TripAdvisor is open for feedback, any tourist or company can contact the site with a complaint or question. Reviews that are highlighted are analyzed with greater care.
If it is discovered that a company is acting dishonestly by ordering positive or negative feedback, the site team will personally contact their representatives to resolve the conflict.
How are scammers punished?
- False reviews are quickly blocked and deleted.
- Each such text negatively affects the rating of a company found to be fraudulent. It is worth noting that the rating on the site is extremely important and affects the trust of customers.
- A company found to be fraudulent is stripped of all the awards it has received from the site.
If TripAdvisor finds an organization selling its services in the field of writing false reviews, then such a company, like the customer, is punished.
The page of a fraudulent company may lose its ranking, but will never be removed from the TripAdvisor database. The site team believes that no matter how fraudulent the company may resort, this should not concern customers and they should not lose the ability to read reviews from travelers like them.
User reviews about the site
On TripAdvisor reviews of hotels, restaurants and other places undergo a special verification system. Therefore, any traveler who visits the site can read reliable information about the places that he plans to visit.
The site’s policy and its long history are so popular with users that finding negative reviews about TripAdvisor on the net is quite problematic.
Some hotels, restaurants and other institutions mark their facade with a sticker with the site logo - a similar mark means that this place is positively marked on TripAdvisor. The mark adds trust and attractiveness to the institution and positively affects its reputation.
Site Pros
According to user reviews, the site has many advantages over other services.
- The popularity and the large number of honest reviews that rate places and places around the world.
- A special algorithm that checks reviews for reliability.
- Fast speed checking and publishing.
- Attractive and clear design.
- The site is convenient to compare various institutions in several ways. Compare prices for going to different restaurants or hotel reviews in Turkey on TripAdvisor is very easy.
- The site policy, according to which the rating of the institution is determined by users, and not the partnership of the site and the company. It’s impossible to buy a place in the ranking for money. You can only deserve it with excellent service and other positive indicators.
How to write a review on the site
Leaving feedback on TripAdvisor.ru is very simple. To do this, just register or log in if you already have a profile.
You should go to your profile and click the “Write a review” button located at the very bottom of the page.
You can choose a place from those that the system has offered you (based on your location or search engine searches), or enter the address and type of institution on a special line by yourself.
If among the places proposed on the basis of your preferences there is not one that you want to evaluate, you will have to find it yourself. Make it easy. Just enter the name of the place and its location in the search bar.
If the place you visited is not yet in the catalog, you will be asked to fill out a special request. Follow the instructions to add the place you visited to the list.
After choosing the place you want to rate, you need to fill out the feedback form itself.
Part of the information is required, for example, rating, address and title. Part is filled as desired. The system will notify you if you miss some important point for sending feedback.
TripAdvisor trusts its users, therefore, to publish a review, you only need to put a check mark in the field of validation and click the "Send feedback" button.
After that, you will see a note in your profile informing you that the review has been sent for approval. It usually takes from one to several business days to consider one application. Most often, it takes 24 to 48 hours to verify the publication.
If you started to write a review, but for some reason you do not have time to finish it right now, you can safely close the page - after all, the draft of your review is already automatically saved in the system. You will see it the next time you click "Write a review" in your profile. By clicking on the draft, you can continue to work on the text.
Unnecessary drafts can be deleted by clicking on the cross in the upper right corner of the review.
How to edit a review on TripAdvisor?
Before publication, you can return to the draft review and edit it as many times as you see fit. After sending for review and publication, editing the text without the help of technical support for the site becomes impossible. If you find an error after publication, you can write a message to technical support asking you to delete your review by filling out a special form. After this, the text will have to be written and sent again.
Why haven’t the review been published?
Sometimes it happens that a review is not published for too long. This can happen for several reasons. The most harmless of them is the workload of the site team. Every day, people from all over the world write reviews for restaurants, bars, museums and hotels for TripAdvisor. And sometimes employees increase the inspection time to review all applications. The site administration reserves the right to give preference to the most relevant and complete reviews in case of a heavy load on the site when checking. In this case, the text will be published, you just need to be patient. TripAdvisor monitors the speed of publishing reviews and always tries to quickly solve technical problems and publish as quickly as possible.
But it also happens that the review is not published due to violations of the rules and principles of the site. Such violations include:
- Not suitable for children to see the expressions used in the text.
- Expressions intended to offend personality and dignity.
- Containing advertisements or antiadvertising not related to the institution being evaluated.
- Commercial nature of the recall.
- Contradiction to the principles of the site or the law.
- Copyright Infringement.
- Comments on other tourists who previously left their review.
- Error in the address or name of the institution.
If the review is rejected, a notification will be sent to the e-mail with a description of the reason why this happened. The letter will contain the rules for writing responses, you will be asked to continue cooperation with the site and write another text, taking into account all the requirements.
How to remove a review from TripAdvisor?
If you accidentally sent incorrect information or changed your opinion about a place or place of interest, you won’t be able to delete your review after publication.
To do this, you need to contact the support site and in the menu "How to help you" select "Delete my review." Next, you will be asked to select the text to be deleted from the list and choose the reason why the review should be deleted. It remains only to send an application and wait until it is considered.
Modifying and editing a review after posting is also not possible. In case of an error, you will have to write in support a request to delete the text and leave it again.
If you are a company that you have left a review for and you do not agree with it, do not immediately look for a way to hide or remove criticism from the site’s page. Experts suggest contacting the client to resolve the conflict situation and, finding out the reason for the guest’s discontent, apologizing and taking all measures to prevent such problems in the future, ask him to delete the review on his own. Do not be upset about the negative feedback, because they help the company grow and improve.
If the client who left a negative review does not make contact or it is not possible to contact him, you can contact the technical support of the site. If the company manages to provide evidence that the recall is defamatory and damages the reputation of the establishment, it will be immediately deleted.
If the situation has gone too far, you can enlist the support of a lawyer and go to court. The latter method of deleting a review is extremely rare: customers or technical support of a site almost always meet the companies that contact them and provide all the evidence.