Isn’t there an element of trust always in the reviews your reading? I mean, come on, I think we all could conclude that even mainstream print media sometimes has a bias. I take everything I read with a grain of salt and always get a second opinion if it’s really important, regardless of the source.

(Disclosure: I am a writer who is paid to review travel products & services. Ethically I have never let this influence my outputs. I’m paid to provide a service – and reviewing is the service, not lip service )

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The Times does fork out every week to send a writer undercover for its hotel reviews – http://cli.gs/Pn8XPV – as it recognises the dilemma. It’s interesting to note how many negative comments the reviewer gives, far more than other hotel reviews we run on at Timesonline. So is the reviewer out to criticise more given a free range? Probably. And are other writers going to choose nice hotels for a freebie they actually want to stay in because they are good? Probably.

It doesn’t mean paid-for or free is right or wrong, it means a range of opinions from good and bad hotels. The Times can afford to pay for hotel reviews so expects a range of opinions – we also need more reviews, and expect the reviewer to identify good places they would recommend and write fairly. Any out-and-out blagger writing up their mate’s dive can be spotted a mile off.

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I agree, you can never trust some of the things you read. I have read reviews on certain hospitality and travel services that have described the hotel/airline as fantastic, but after trying it, I was disappointed by their quality of service or lack thereof. As a frequent traveler frustrated with the bad service and false reviews, I actually became a mystery shopper for a program called Evaluate It by SQM. So now when I travel for leisure, I stay at specific hotels and fly via certain airlines. I fill out a standardized evaluation form and in return, I get reimbursed up to 50% for the price of the night’s stay and/or the flight.

Although companies may hire PR agencies to collect and publish positive reviews of their service/product, they are also interested in getting a good understanding of their real level of service and quality as perceived by customers. By having mystery shoppers evaluate their services, companies receive accurate evaluations that point them in the direction of where they need to improve so that all the falsely positive reviews, become true. And so frustrated travelers like myself can be eventually satisfied with the quality of service.

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With the volume of review content out there and the sheer number of sources, I kind of find it necessary these days to triangulate news & product information on the web across sources.

Bad news – lots of time spent. Good news -easy access to multiple sources has improved the average quality of travel information.

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Do you trust Trip Advisor more than bloggers in that case? Negative and positive reviews given, no bias (except for personal taste).

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Curious what you think about my coverage of the Hilton Waikoloa?

I wasn’t paid… I simply got a room comped and wanted to meet the mainland bloggers:

http://damontucker.com/so-much-more-hawaii-at-the-waikoloa/

I certainly don’t get paid to blog… Yes I have advertisers… but they approached me.

I blog things that happen to me as they happen… I thought I was pretty honest about how I got the room and all.

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Darren

It works the other way to, I know of someone who had a bad holiday, mostly down to rain and admittedly hotel problems (kitchen flooded and pool was out of action due to contamination from rain). This effect 3 days of his 7 nights stay, the tour operator refund all but the flight cost but the person was not happy. So they got family and friends to log on and write bad reviews (up to that point the hotel only had 2 poor reviews out of around 20).. so hotel end up with 10 bad reviews.

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There used to be a standard, in the food writing world, that restaurant critics were to visit each target restaurant, undercover, no fewer than three times, prior to writing a review. These restaurant visits were, of course, subsidized by the commissioning publication, and reviewers were typically staff writers.

In this day and age, the structure of the writing world has changed so much (i.e., newspapers and magazines are firing staff writers and buying content from freelancers, who rarely get their expenses paid), and the pay has become so abysmal, that it is hard to know how any travel writer who writes reviews could possibly afford to bankroll their own travel.

I am a luxury travel writer who regularly stays in $900/night hotels, and the only way to do this is to accept comps. Fortunately for me, I am rarely presented with the moral dilemma of reporting a bad stay–since the places I review are already well-vetted, the focus of my pieces is to recommend spa treatments, cocktails, and odds and ends I like about a given resort (not to make a stay here/don’t stay here recommendation).

Last weekend, I did stay at a resort that, in my opinion, had not rightly earned its four stars. The conversation I plan to have with the Director of Sales is that I don’t think it’s right for my luxury travel column but that I will consider it for other freelance travel articles that I write in the future. I will also offer candid feedback detailing my reservations about reviewing it.

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Darren,

I appreciate your concern about blogger reviews and people who accept freebies. And it’s a valid question.

Over at markstravelnotes.com, I’ve been including accomodation and restaurant commentary and recommendations since it started – and have been more than a little critical about some places by taking a no-tolerance approach to bad service.

Conversly, I also would like to recommend places that have really have been good – places really I do go back to in the the real world – and do so.

IMO, this provides some balance.

To date, I’ve not been offered and have not sought a freebie in exchange for any kind of review – positive or otherwise – and would have turned out this request before they lost interest. Such conditions are not good – it’s tantamount to a bribe, imo.

I can, however, see the attraction of taking a freebie and how some may be tempted to take it – even with the condition that only a positive review can be written.

If you do take a freebie (no matter what the conditions) and blog about (or make a post on a consumer site) that fact and any conditions must be declared and the reader can take that into account when making their decision. Your honesty and transparency will serve you well.

In my view, it’s dodgy that the PR company wants positive reviews /guaranteed/ although it’s their job to solicit positive publicity for their client. In my opinion, a review should cover both the goods and the bads (sometimes there’s only good or only bad!) and whomsoever runs the establishment should pick up on the bads and act on them. By improving /fixing the bads (aka weaknesses) they can improve their product offering and, consequently, improve the reviews they receive without such conditions.

Personally, I would have turned down a request for a review with a condition of “good reviews only” before they lost interest. It doesn’t do my credibility any good – I speak my mind and require the liberty to do so.

Mark Sukhija

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Darren, don’t you think the trust is in the person writing the reviews, not the fact that they’re “bloggers”? CN Traveler — which I do like a lot, BTW, never runs a single negative review, they ONLY run reviews of stuff they recommend. And I’m not sure why you’d trust a product review more than a destination review if the terms are the same.

Bloggers need to disclose when they get stuff for free, if it’s a stay or a product. That helps establish trust. And they need to be up front with their hosts, too, saying that they will review honestly, they’re not for sale. That’s what establishes trust.

I do think it’s more difficult to write a critical review on a comp, but I don’t think it’s impossible to be honest about the terms of your stay, the cleanliness and/or comfort of the facility, etc..

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I don’t think it’s wrong for Bloggers to accept a complimentary hotel stay or even a holiday as long as you feel you can be honest in your review and the offer is given with no strings attatched. Unlike the Times jounalists, most of us travel bloggers make no money for all the time we put in and so it’s a way of subsidising your travel experiences.

I think also that you can judge in advance if a product or hotel is going to be a good or bad experience, and I personally wouldn’t agree to review something if I didn’t believe in advance that I would be able to recommend it to my readers. I agree with Pam that you need to disclose to your readers what you are receiving.

I also think that when writing a review you can do so in a fair way but one which highlights the good things. You can point out that it might suit a certain type of traveller – I have stayed in hostels which would be fantastic for younger travellers looking for great nightlife but totally unsuitable for those looking for a calm and relaxing holiday. Even if the decor is dowdy the friendly welcome might make up for it.

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@ Mark (or others who have expressed a similar opinion)

May I ask the origin of the belief that a “deal” is made between hotel PR and reviewers exchanging a comp stay for a favorable review? As I state above, I regularly accept comp stays, but I have never had a PR rep mention or insinuate in any way that the comp was being provided in order to cultivate a favorable reivew, nor has this been my tacit understanding. Certainly, they are *hopeful* for good press, and they are invested in showing us a good time, but the folks that I deal with seem mildly fearful of journalists and are keenly aware that I could write anything.

Do PR Reps try to sell me on whatever they are marketing at the time? Of course. Yet, when it comes time for me to write my articles, I write what I want to–not what I’ve been spoon-fed. I can count on one hand how many times (out of dozens) that I’ve written about a special or an event they were actively selling, and in these cases, the events and deals were truly noteworthy.

I come up with the article concepts. I pick which places to write about. And when the time comes, I write the articles. I am really curious as to whether others have seen evidence of “dealmaking”, or whether this is simply an assumption.

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