Trip Advisor Fake reviews

[alimac]

I recently had the unfortunate experience of diving with Ocean Explorers in St. Maarten

Before I travelled I read the hype on Trip Advisor and gave it a go. The dive sites were ok but my overall experience very poor.
Upon my return to the dive shop (Ocean Explorers St. Maarten) after the dives we were asked to review the dive shop on Trip Advisor. When I say asked, it was more "Begged" to review them. I was not interested so to ensure I was going to give them a 5 star review I was offered a FREE T-shirt !!
Great I thought and took them up on the offer.

I posted the review and was honest about my poor experience. When I checked later to see if my review was posted I noticed a strange looking review was posted. It stated how amazing the experience was and how cool the shark dive was? I flagged this to Trip Advisor due to it's content and it was treated as a Fake review.

It turned out the owners of Ocean Explorers or someone affiliated with the business posted it. Trip Advisor can see where the IP address comes from amongst other stuff.
A Trip Advisor member of staff emailed me personally and thanked me for noticing the Fake Review.
It was at this point I made Trip Advisor aware of the incentives and them begging to review but so far no action has been taken against Ocean Explorers.

I want to know if anyone else has experienced anything like this through Trip Advisor or any other review site as people should be aware of Trip Advisor.

 

[Doc]

Trip Advisor is an oft used and referenced website that has very little weight in my experience.

A few of the many, many operations I am familiar with in various Caribbean islands look entirely different when I read about them on Trip Advisor.

I enjoy looking at the reviews for rutted-out cattle car operations that serve areas that have suffered trashed reefs for years, and yet the posters seem to rate it very highly. There is no "experience meter" to show the breadth of any given poster's opinion.

If you read posts on Trip Advisor with care, you often see reports from "resort course" divers, not the best measure to base your decisions off of. I have seen a number of posts that were so specific and glowing (yet contradictory with my reality), that I simply assumed as you have, that they were sock-monkey :monkey: posts.

As many people that have discovered such glaring disparity, posters still come on SB and reference that they have read posts on Trip Advisor. Notice how it's not called SCUBA Trip Advisor?

Stick with :sblogo:

 

[RJP]

Stick with :sblogo:

Agreed! When planning a dive trip I want to hear from other divers... not from other people who had occasion to dive.

The biggest challenge to the use of Trip Advisor is that you don't know anything about the person writing the review. And I don't mean do they work for the hotel or the hotel's competitor. There's a couple points to consider:

1. Most people in the world generally fall into two distinct groups: Easy to Please, and Impossible to Please. If you don't know which group an individual is in, you don't really know how to look at their review.
2. People with strong opinions - either positive or negative - are most motivated to post: So you only get "extreme" opinions, perhaps missing the opinions of the 80% of people who thought The El Vacationer Grande resort was "perfectly fine" but you will for sure hear from the 10% who thought it was worse than Gitmo and the 10% who thought it rivaled Versailles in terms of luxury.
3. You don't know what people's frame of reference is: I'm happy that the Royal Vagabond Resort is "the most fabulous place" you've ever stayed, but if the second-best place you ever stayed was "the White Star Motel out by the old abandoned drive-in theater on highway 6" I'm not so sure your review means much to me.
4. Everyone has cultural, ethnic, and economic prejudices - no matter what: Some people might not understand that what is considered "friendly" in one country is considered "aggressive" in another. For others "rude and indifferent people" often means "their skin was darker than mine and they talked funny." One person's idea of "a charming, simple island" is another person's "poor, dirty little country." My idea of an "ideal laid back vacation" may be a hammock between two palm trees while yours is a mink covered chaise lounge at the Ritz.
5. You don't know what the reviewer had in mind when they picked the spot: Maybe THEY screwed up in making their choice! The fact that a couple on their honeymoon "hated" Buckaroo Banzai's Blizzard Beach Family Adventure Toon Town Resort and SkateBoard Park doesn't mean that you and your family of six kids ages 10-16 should dismiss it as an option.
6. Many people are just plain stupid: "Our trip to this idyllic little island in the middle of the ocean was ruined by the food - all they had was fish!" or "When we checked in we were dismayed to find that the Cliff Top suite we had specifically requested was a 5 minute walk along a steep path down to the beach." or my favorite "The brochure said this was the best resort in all of Mud Flats but after staying there for 14 nights I can tell you it's no Four Seasons!"

Lots of fun to read Trip Advisor, but take any review with a GIGANTIC grain of salt!

 

[diver 85]

kinda falls under the category 'don't belive anything you see & nuttin' of what you hear'---or something like that.......

 

[BDSC]

I will go and check out reviews on TripAdvisor but I'm usually looking more for comments about the food and rooms than the actual diving aspect of it. I will say that recently a group of us decided to go to Roatan and after reading the reviews on TA AND what people had to say here on SB, we decided stay and dive at the Reef House Resort. The reviews on TA were very very good and after going I can see why. The place was all it was made out to be. So in this case, TA, in my opinion, got it right.

I also reported a fake review I found on TA as well. Someone had reviewed the Brac Reef Beach Resort and they were really negative about the place and they suggested another resort at the same time. (That's always a red flag to me) The review was dated in March of 2009. Well I knew the resort was totally closed down during 2009 because they were rebuilding after the 2008 hurricane. TripAdvisor investigated and removed it.

To me TripAdvisor is just another tool like ScubaBoard when deciding where to go and where to stay. I take neither as being gospel.

 

[robint]

I have read reviews (dive shops, hotels, destinations) on Trip Advisor and found most of them sound like fake raves (by employees) or written by jerks who can't be pleased... not much in between. I only use it to look at photos, maps, and such.

 

[cappyjon431]

When we get divers who dive with us for a week or so, I am not afraid to ask them to relate their experience on Trip Advisor, but I do emphasize that they include the good, bad, and the ugly about their experience. This gives me the opportunity to correct problems with gear, staff, boats, etc. that I might not know about since I am stuck in the office a good part of the time. I want feedback from divers so that we can offer a top notch operation. I always ask divers how they enjoyed their experience and the face-to-face feedback is usually pretty good, but Trip Advisor gives consumers the opportunity of writing freely without having to worry about offending me or my staff.

I do know that one of my competitors has multiple employee posts raving about their operation, but I am too lazy to complain to Trip Advisor about it. I have noticed that TA has removed about a half dozen of their posts and in their place put in a message saying that the posts were removed because they appeared to be promotional in nature.

 

[alimac]

Wow, thanks for the response!

I have just spent a week in Hospital so apologize for my late response to you all.

I had a very nice email from the Trip Advisor staff. They investigated the claim that Ocean Explorers were producing Fake reviews and found that Ocean Explorers had produced FAKE Reviews about themselves.

Just checked Trip Advisor and when I posted my review there were around 130 reviews and now they only have 96. That means that the Trip Advisor staff found 34 fake or suspicious reviews on their website.

They were number 3 in St. Maarten which is why I chose them in the first place, now they are number 6?

This clearly goes to show that Trip Advisor needs to be taken with a "GIGANTIC Pinch of salt" (Thank you Roatan Man for that comment) and don't believe everything you read.

Shame on Ocean explorers for producing Fake Reviews and getting caught redhanded and also for Trip Advisor allowing these reviews to go live.

Next year I will use Scubaboard to get information where to dive, at least it's un-biased information.

Thank you to everyone who responded

Alistair.

 

[Rhone Man]

Ray pretty much nailed it. Although fake reviews can be a problem on TripAdvisor, a lot of them are pretty obvious.

My bigger gripe with TripAdvisor is that it is not very Scuba focused. Even extremely well known dive sites are hard to find on the site as reviewed attractions.

 

[The Chairman]

I am not sure why the Internet brings out the Con Artist in a few resorts, but it does. People somehow think that they can out think everyone in this information age and they are sorely deluded.

We are often asked to investigate overly positive and negative reviews about resorts. About %30 of the suspicious posts/threads are sock puppets.

Tips for resorts:
Don't beg for positive reviews: EARN THEM. Do encourage people to freely talk about their experiences.
Remember Honesty is NOT the best policy: It's the ONLY one. The use of sock puppets or other subterfuge will blow up in your face.
Please join ScubaBoard. People have questions that only YOU can answer. You will understand what the Tribe wants only if you become a part of the Tribe.

Tips for Posters.
Report Suspicious Activity. If your think a report is bogus, don't try to out them publicly. REPORT the post instead. Far less for us to clean up, and it will save you some embarrassment if the post/thread turns out to be legit.
Freely express your opinions of your experiences. This is the heart and soul of ScubaBoard and what makes us so useful. Divers talking to Divers about what is meaningful to them.
Don't try to punish a dive op for a simple disagreement. Using the threat of a bad report on ScubaBoard as leverage is dishonest and hurts the entire community. It's really not that hard for us to spot such bogus postings and your ability to continue to post is at risk.
Avoid becoming a POV Warrior about any destination. The most obvious one was the "Crime in Bonaire" Warrior who has since been banned from that forum. We don't need to continue myths or to eviscerate an economy so that you can prove you are "right".