TripAdvisor, a companion that means well

Many retailers (hoteliers, restaurateurs ...) are making their voices heard and denouncing a certain dominant position held by this machine, which today needs no introduction. Scandals surrounding false reviews, erroneous information, haphazard moderation ... the accusations hanging over TripAdvisor are starting to gain ground, but are still far from shaking the owl, which sits peacefully on the controversial branch of online tourism reviews. Let's take a look.

Let's get back to some basics, just to be clear. This American website, soon to blow out its twenty-four candles, aims to (indeed, already does) provide a unified platform for tourist information, coupled with reviews (so-called constructive criticism, positive or negative) from a community of travelers. No business is excluded: hotels, restaurants, bars, places of interest, activities, cruises, airlines and other tourist establishments ...

Bringing users on board, TripAdvisor collects millions of ratings (in the form of the famous five little bubbles), and thus offers a ranking and various search filters, for these famous establishments, worldwide, offering unrivalled ease of navigation.

This all-rounder of online tourism also offers many other complementary features. Accommodation booking tools, price comparisons for travelers or business formulas and devices that increase communication possibilities tenfold for professionals ... embellish the Swiss army knife of the volatile.

Certainly! on the customer side. The platform (whose idea is to be as collaborative a social network as possible) allows web users to create an account, and a user profile. The rest is pretty straightforward: searches for places and leisure activities take them from "page" to "page". The establishments in a given region appear, allowing users to consult their ratings and customer reviews, with the aim of choosing the best place to stay for dinner or a night out. A significant bonus for visitors to the platform: it's entirely ... free!"

But how does this seemingly well-oiled mechanism support the company's 3000+ employees?

The business model behind it is by no means exclusive. It's inspired by the great digital success stories of our generation, such as Facebook, or Google, for example. TripAdvisor's various revenues come from, among other things:

• clicks on so-called "sponsored" links (through the purchase of "ads" enabling pros to rise to the top of search results),
• subscriptions to paid formulas (offering choices of photos, reviews to feature ...),
• its other high-traffic sites, other types of "clicks" charged to advertisers, and commissions on bookings made with its partners.

The owl with the heterochromatic eyes may have a long arm, but that doesn't mean it's excluded from 2.0 polemics; witness the recent topics that have made the bird wobble.

In fact, the skies are getting overcast, on the side of some "professionals". Highly referenced on Google, the platform has a virtual monopoly on the online reviews market (and not only, given its plurality of services), and far outstrips many other high value-added websites. So much so, that users can naturally be led to "zap" the websites of establishments (among others), in favor of TripAdvisor.

More and more professionals are questioning the reviews posted on their establishment pages. In particular, they denounce the fact that, "hidden" behind their screens, Internet users are far more inclined to sometimes unjustified criticism. They lament the lack of dialogue "on the spot", after a meal or a stay. Yet this solution would sometimes be sufficient to openly share opinions, or defuse a commercial dispute, for example. Sadly, these observations echo the hateful or discriminatory practices on social networks and the web, in general, from which our cyber-generation suffers -hyper connected, but not hyper communicative.

Others denounce the absurdity of a system of algorithms. In 2019, Jean-Jacques Samoy, owner of a café in Saint-Malo, singularly spoke out against the platform. In a second action, the latter wished to demonstrate the absurdity of the ratings, which ironically ranked him among the restaurants in Saint-Malo, even though his establishment offers no dishes. To follow through, he appealed to a community of Internet users, asking them to post comments, each more absurd than the last, about the "restaurant" where we don't eat. The idea: to make his "simple" café (quite reputable), the best restaurant on TripAdvisor, in order to highlight any flaws or shortcomings in the control of reviews and pages.

Further to this, TripAdvisor recently made light of a new controversy affecting its review verification process. The platform has justified itself, accused of leaking too much through its sieve of fake reviews. "With this report, the first of its kind, we want to provide information [...] about [...] our important content moderation efforts," said Stephen Kaufer, CEO and co-founder of TripAdvisor. In essence, in 2018, out of 66 million reviews published on the giant's pages, 2.1% were fraudulent, or 1.32 million. To complete the picture, 91% of fakes are positive. Only 6% are negative.

Whatever the case and whatever the quantities, the fraud measures are firm, and this policy, transparently assumed by TripAdvisor.

Today, some tourism players are exhausted. The "blackmail of bad reviews" is multiplying, the race for comments, suspicions between competitors, the spirit of competition between merchants to rank well rank in the engine's results ... is gangreneing the profession.

Furthermore, TripAdvisor's stranglehold on the "establishments" pages is deemed too strong; there's no question of withdrawing from the website (unless you report your establishment as "permanently closed"); to do this, the website covers up, claiming that the information it offers is considered public ...

Finally, the rates charged on the packages dedicated to business -cited above- chill some. "It's unfair that some businesses can spend hundreds of euros a month to get better visibility on this site, or to highlight this or that review", complains a local restaurant owner.

At the end of the day, it's not fair that we're not going to be able to offer our customers the best possible service.

TripAdvisor undeniably offers a great deal of visibility. Some industry professionals deem it good, others deplore it; in those same two measures, TripAdvisor's impact is significant on the sales of thousands of companies.

Moreover, let's humbly admit that no company is perfect; in a continuous improvement process, any constructive feedback is good to take. Assuming that every human being is endowed with propriety and respect, no exchange on this Routard du web should be problematic.

Ultimo, even if it is certainly possible for company representatives to claim and administer their "establishments" pages, respond directly to comments or report certain reviews without untying their purse, the blue card will inevitably heat up for merchants (in a position to invest) wishing to unlock valuable functionality.

On the customer side, there's no doubt that the website offers great functionality and considerable time savings. The tool is revolutionizing vacation planning for many nomads and getaway enthusiasts who, above all, want to get an idea of their future holiday.

This may seem legitimate, especially in a world where access to information and planning are easier. On the other hand, the question is whether all this ease doesn't, on balance, spoil the surprise a little ...

Some visuals may have been retouched.