Hoteliers call for new online travel review laws
Updated on 22 August 2010
As sales of travel guides are in freefall with free online reviews on websites like TripAdvisor freely available to help travellers decide where to stay on their holidays, a group of hoteliers tell Channel 4 News they want a change in the law to make websites liable for what reviewers say.
Finding that perfect B&B or best-value hotel can be pretty daunting.
But from Barbados to Blackpool, there's been a revolution in HOW we choose our holiday hideaway.
Sales of travel guides are in freefall. Down 22 per cent in the last five years, according to the Nielsen BookScan Travel Publishing Year Book, and plummeting a further 11 per cent in the first six months of this year.
Now, it may just be cautious booking because of the economic down-turn or perhaps because nowadays we just expect advice to be free, but web-sites that carry reviews from other travellers are on the up.
The biggest is TripAdvisor, with 35 million reviews by happy - and not-so-happy, members of the public across the world. And it reported a 50 per cent increase in the number of users logging on in the last year.
A holidaymaker in Blackpool told Channel 4 News: "It's best to look at what people are saying on reviews like how clean the place is. What the food's like, what sort of ammenities they've got there."
Another holidaymaker said: "All the stuff we needed was online so we looked at the customer reviews and the holiday park reviews and we're staying in a caravan park two miles up the road.''
"Usually the majority of people they give roughly the same advice and you tend to go by that so I'd go by that definitely."
Web reviews have become so powerful, they can bring a business to its knees.
Chirag Khajuria's hotel appeared in TripAdvisor's list of Britain's top 10 dirtiest hotels earlier this year.
He says it was an unfair rating and he has lost clientele as a result.
He told Channel 4 News: "First of all we only took over the hotel for six months so most of the reviews there were of the previous owners and out of eight there were only, I think, five which were bad.
"And branding such a big name, on the basis on five reviews which TripAdvisor can't even prove they were genuine customers or that they were my customers, is a very shameful thing for TripAdvisor."
TripAdvisor says it has now addressed Mr Khajuria's complaint.
But he is not the only angry hotelier. Hotel trade blogs and web sites swirl with claims of dirty tricks, of false and damaging reviews deliberately posted to blacken the competition.
Franck McCready has a trekking business and a hotel in Yorkshire. With 50 other hotel owners he has mounted a campaign calling for a ban on anonymous reviews.
Frank McCready told Channel 4 News: "People are slamming their competitors. They're boosting their own. Hoteliers for instance get blackmailed by customers who want a discount and say 'if I don't get a discount I'm going to post something nasty of TripAdvisor'.
"We're after a change in the law that will make the website providers liable and also the individuals liable for what they say."
But TripAdvisor are not about to change their business plan. Though they have just opened a customer services department for hoteliers, they say anonymous reviews are what makes them successful.
Christine Petersen from TripAdvisor told Channel 4 News: "For every hotel that complains about TripAdvisor's bad impact on their business, there are probably 10 that love the fact that TripAdvisor is there. Tens of millions of people around the world are reading the reviews.
"They're coming to the hotel, those properties because those reviews are there, because travellers around the world have left their honest and candid opinions."
So are the days numbered for the professional travel expert?
Tom Robbins the Financial Times travel editor told Channel 4 News he thinks not.
He said: "I think what we're going to see in the very near future are a new generation of apps for mobile phones that give travellers the best of both worlds, because you'll be able to read a professional review and then scroll down straight away and see reviews from other paying punters."
The recent collapse of the holiday companies KISS and Goldtrail has not only ruined the holidays of tens of thousands; it is also forcing us all to scrutinise who we book with even more closely.
The surge in online reviews and advice about where to sleep or eat is dramatically changing how we do that and it is forcing changes too on the travel industry as it fights to keep customers and reputations.
