Faking it online – Online reviews explored

When on holiday, searching for a place to sleep many use online review websites like Tripadvisor for advice. Tripadvisor ideally aims towards supplying you with honest experiences and opinions by past visitors. However, the anonymity of internet comes with a price. How do you know the positive review wasn’t left by the establishment itself, or the negative review wasn’t left by a direct competitor?

Tnooz recentrly reported on a study that revealed that independent hotels are more likely to boost their own ratings and have an incentive to leave negative reviews about direct independent regional competitors. Now that doesn’t sound very transparent and honest does it? Thankfully Tripadvisor uses sophisticated filters that can scan reviews for biased material. Obviously this won’t catch every single one of them but it’s weeding out the worst of them. And with the other genuine travel reviews you can still be sure you’re making a well informed decision about where to eat or sleep.

Fortunately Spotted by Locals doesn’t need intricate filters to weed these out. Because we handpick and meet with our Spotters in person we know perfectly well where our reviews are coming from! Our Spotters write about the places they love, and nobody tells them to!