TripAdvisor, hotels and questionable practices
TripAdvisor’s power over the hotel industry is beginning to exceed the limits of reasonableness. For hotels, positive opinions on the platform are increasingly important, and they are willing to do anything to obtain them, including spending more and more resources to monitor the platform, answer each positive comment with a thank-you, and apologize or explain for each negative rating.
Recently, after a stay at the Jeddah Hilton, I received an email asking me to fill in the usual valuation survey. In general, such surveys are carried out electronically. As my wife and I had a long plane journey ahead and access to WiFi, we proceeded to fill out the hotel satisfaction survey, which was overall quite positive.
At the end of the process, we were offered an option to write an opinion on TripAdvisor. After saying yes, waiting for a login on the website, we found ourselves — I should say at this point it is usually my wife who completes such surveys and who has an active profile on TripAdvisor — that the hotel retained the review and, after a while, published my comments on TripAdvisor via a new account containing my username, my surname and a number, without a photo, and associated with the email that I have in my Hilton Honors account, as can be seen in the illustration that accompanies the text.
In all honesty, the legality of this seemed doubtful. First, because it is absurd: I already have a profile on the network, which although inactive because I tend to publish my opinions in my wife’s name, meaning that there was little sense in generating a new profile. Secondly, because by allowing the hotel, not me, to generate a new account associated with my email without any verification is a violation of the usual security practices. Thirdly, because the hotel has decided whether to publish my comments, allowing it edit them or not to publish them if they are not favorable to it. And fourthly, because by associating a new account with my email, I automatically start receiving all kinds of unwanted TripAdvisor emails.
Using information contained in my loyalty program to open a TripAdvisor account on my behalf is completely unacceptable. I have since removed the comments, although they may possibly be re-published on my wife’s account.
The fact that hotels need positive opinions on TripAdvisor cannot justify practices like this. A quick examination of the Hilton profile in Jeddah shows many others in which the author’s name responds to the pattern “name” + “initial of the surname” + number, suggesting that the practice is not isolated at all, but habitual. In a first analysis, the pattern does not seem to be repeated in other Hiltons, which could simply indicate excessive zeal by an employee. It is certainly food for thought: platforms such as TripAdvisor have acquired so much power in the hotel industry that they can now justify questionable practices like this. For hotels, the margin demanded by the agencies online already supposes a major problem, and they are now trying to avoid paying those margins by offering incentives to travelers who reserve directly. Things are going to get worse before they get better…
(En español, aquí)
