At their best, online reviews can be vital recommendations, or rejections, for travellers seeking the best return on investment for their hard-earned dough. At their worst, they can be doctored, fake or even harmful.
To its credit, Tripadvisor has just released its third Review Transparency Report to shine a light on the platform’s moderation practices and more.
As the world’s largest travel guidance platform based on user-generated content and shared experiences, Tripadvisor obviously receives a serious amount of submissions.
Last year alone, it garnered more than 30 million reviews by 17.4 million members (over half of which came from Europe).
Human moderators then manually scrutinised around 2.3 million review submissions to determine their legitimacy. That’s a lot of labour.
Most importantly, the report showed that 1.3 million reviews were identified as fake and removed, with 72 per cent of these caught before being posted.
In total, 23 million members submitted more than 73 million reviews and opinions to the platform.
Sweet emotion
Travellers in 2022 were also more passionate than in previous report years, showing both stronger negative and positive feelings in their posts.
“The average rating rose to 4.34 bubbles out of 5. More than 70% of reviews were 5 bubbles, up from 66% in 2020, and 57% in 2018, indicating that travellers recognise the value of their experiences and appreciate the efforts businesses make, especially during difficult times,” the report noted.
“Conversely, when a traveller had a negative experience, they were more likely to rate it lower, with 7.9% of submitted reviews awarded a 1-bubble rating, up from 7.2% in 2020.”
Why travel advisors matter
Interestingly, consumers are TEN TIMES more likely to read reviews that reveal a serious safety issue than typical reviews. Travel advisors take note: this is priority information for your clients.
According to the report, accommodation garnered the most reviews (40.3 per cent), followed closely by restaurants (38.43 per cent) and experiences (20.84 per cent).
Flights and cruises only accounted for 0.41 per cent and 0.02 per cent of reviews respectively. So traditional recommendations – such as those made by travel advisors and other industry professionals – remain paramount for holidaymakers seeking advice.
Total business listings on the site also rose to 11.2 million, which was a 16 per cent rise on 2020 numbers.
According to recent Tripadvisor research, leisure travel takes the largest share of consumers’ annual budgets with almost one in five discretionary dollars (19%) allocated to holidays.
