Online Reviews: Flawed or Focused?

With online reviews becoming an increasingly important channel for turning browsers into bookers, hotel owners are becoming more concerned with monitoring – and in some cases tweaking – sites that allow reviews.

 

An April 2012 Wall Street Journal Article titled "Big Flaws in Hotel Rankings," states that "influencing reviews and ratings is a time-honored tradition in the hotel and restaurant industries." After about five years of printing reader letters about hotels in the 1960s, travel-guidebook legend Arthur Frommer said he realized that hotels were writing letters about themselves. "Hotels are so dependent on reviews that of course they will generate their own," Frommer said. "They would be crazy not to." As for online reviews, which have replaced guidebooks for many travelers, Mr. Frommer has disdain. "It's a vast buzzing, blooming confusion."

 

Read the full article here.