Close to one million reviews submitted to Tripadvisor’s site in the last year were fake, according to the travel platform’s 2021 Review Transparency Report.
The report, published at the end of October, analyzed a full year of data on reviews submitted by the global travel community. In 2020, travellers submitted more than 26 million reviews, of which more than 12 million were for restaurants, more than eight million for hotels and more than four million for experiences. Tripadvisor rejected or removed over two million of these reviews, representing 8.6% of all submissions, that did not comply with the platform’s community standards. In total, 3.6% of all review submissions last year were identified as fake, with the majority being rejected before they were posted to the Tripadvisor site.
There are a number of reasons why Tripadvisor rejects or removes reviews, ranging from community standards violations, such as the use of profanity, to fake review activity.
Becky Foley, head of Trust and Safety at Tripadvisor, said: “Knowing that you can rely on trusted guidance from travelers who have been there before has never been more important. As we continue the work to earn the trust travelers place in our business, we take the enforcement of our community standards incredibly seriously as we use the best in technology and human moderation practices to fight fraud. Today’s report demonstrates how effective our team, tactics and technology are at maintaining those standards.”
This is Tripadvisor’s second Review Transparency Report, with the previous one released in 2019.
