Open letter to Chirstopher Rodriguez CBE 11 February 2010
Chairman Visit Britain
Department of Culture Media and Sport
Dear Mr Rodriguez,
I am in receipt of your letter to my MP, William Hague, in connection with my concerns concerning a link between Visit Britain and the review site TripAdvisor. My concerns about this company are very justifiable, and are shared by a very large and exponentially growing number of people from within the trade but also now from members of the public. TripAdvisor are already the subject of a number of legal actions on both sides of the Atlantic, and I am aware of several more that are in preparation. These are instigated not by sour grapes on behalf of a few hoteliers with bad reviews. but by genuine concerns about the practices and integrity of the company. Even a group of their own staff are in litigation in the Boston Courts.
Trip Advisor is a fatally flawed and unsustainable iconcept in the log term. It accepts reviews from any source with no attempt to verify the bona fides of the reviewers.who remain anonymous. As a result competing hoteliers can damage their competition with impunity. Unscrupulous hoteliers can game a rating system that is derisory to gain advantage and mislead the public.( see The Times where journalists were able to propel a number of not very salubrious London hotels to top TripAdvisor ratings within a few days by posting fake reviews) There are instances of members of the public blackmailing hoteliers with the threat of fake reviews on the site. Even having actually stayed at a hotel is not a prerequisite for posting comments.
Why do they do nothing to allay the criticism and preserve their reputation?. The answer is that they cannot. The revenue generated by PPCs is a fractional sum per click. The cost of verifying the millions of postings to the site would eliminate any profit. In addition in many jurisdictions including Europe, as soon as you start monitoring and editing postings you become the publisher, and therefore legally liable (as Visit Britain republishing the material would also be) for the veracity of the content. They do of course monitor and manipulate content but can’t state that openly. Instead they claim to they have utilised sophisticated alogorythms that will identify patterns of writing and eliminate regular fake posters like the PR companies who openly offer to create favourable reviews for businesses for a price. It is hogwash anyone could post a half a dozen reviews in the style of Samuel Pepys. Thus any accusation of human intervention and the consequent liabilities is averted at an affordable minimal cost. Similarly their Boston employees, if they win their action, will add another substantial financial blow to the fragile economic model that cannot be avoided.
This is probably why they have now started charging hotels ($600) to have the contact details, (that used to be displayed when they first signed up but were subsequently removed), reinstated. There are numerous comments on the internet that suggest that if you pay negative reviews are removed. Whether that is true or not, no one is going to pay to have their business ruined by questionable reviews, so one must assume that those who don’t pay are in for a very bad time. The main question is, how can a company that is charging for the entry on their web site be trusted to maintain an impartial service. There is only one logical answer.
I will not bore you with the details of the disgusting manner in which any hotelier who has the temerity to challenge TripAdvisor is treated. The examples on the web are legion. If you take the trouble to look You will find a rating sytem that is a mathematical joke, you will discover that the “commitment to investigate reports of abuse” is very selective, and certainly does not apply to hoteliers reports. There are also in my view serious breaches of the Data Protection Act for which TripAdvisor UK mysteriously has not registered, not to mention alleged copyright infringements.
I obviously did not state my case clearly enough in my original letter. I do not as you suggest advocate a publicly funded alternative to Trip Advisor. I suggest a UK company of which there are many who could provide an equivalent service ( and incidentally I have no association with or vested interest in) that employ British people, pay taxes in this country (Check out TripAdvisor Uks’ accounts to see how little stays here) and can distinguish between ethics and a county to the east of London. Instead of paying an American company, you have a valuable asset in the form of the excellent and verifiable data provided by the hotel assessment scheme, that could be exploited to the benefit of the British tax payer, and the travelling public.
I was well on the way to my fourth star this year, but I will not be joining the assessment scheme and I am sure that many others will follow suit, when they become aware of our own governments foolish plan. Disappointing after a lifetime spent in the Tourist Industry. Thank God I am retiring next year!.
The above is of course my subjective opinion.
Sincerely
Frank McCready
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