Should You Trust Tripadvisor?
May 28, 2013
Frank@OBOW in Accor Hotels, Travel News & Regulations, Tripadvisor

I admit it, I rely on the reviews on TripAdvisor when choosing a hotel.

But now, I’m not so sure if what I read is legit.

Peter Cook, the PR guy for the Asia-Pacific region of Accor Hotels, has admitted to posting over 100 reviews on TripAdvisor most of which are positive for Accor Hotels and negative towards the competition. He claims these were his personal observations and have nothing to do with his job—especially since they were posted under an assumed screen name.

Cook only admitted to posting the reviews after a firm working for TripAdvisor found the connection between him and the alias he was using online. (It seems this PR expert, or Director of Propoganda as he likes to call himself,  wasn’t clever enough NOT to link his Trip Advisor alias to his personal Facebook account.)

Accor Hotels isn’t laughing. They’ve placed Cook on a leave of absence saying he abused their social networking policy.

I’m still going to use Trip Advisor only a little more carefully in the future.

What about you? Still trust them?

 

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