New review website tackles TripAdvisor

AT A time when TripAdvisor
is coming under fire over
fake reviews and clients
blackmailing hoteliers, a new type
of review website, TripExpert, has
launched. It hints at its competitor’s
troubles in the tagline on its website:
‘Finally, hotel reviews you can trust’.
TripExpert doesn’t feature
reviews from customers but
instead aggregates expert advice
about hotels from different media
outlets. Each property is awarded
a TripExpert Score that is based on
reviews in leading travel publications
such as Lonely Planet, Frommer’s,
and Travel + Leisure magazine.
The TripExpert Score, a number
between 60 and 100, represents the
consensus of expert opinion about
the hotel.
TripAdvisor declined to comment
on “other businesses and their
business models”. TripAdvisor
spokesperson, James Kay, told TNW
the user website would continue
to focus on its key goals of giving
customers a voice and promoting
transparency in the travel industry.
“By reading lots of reviews you can
quickly build up an accurate picture
of a place, and it is this ability to
tap into the wisdom of a huge travel
community that makes a site like
ours so useful.”
TipExpert co-founder and ceo,
Andrew Nicol, says crowdsourced
opinions about hotels
and restaurants are only useful if
the reader has the time to read
hundreds of reviews. “No one knows
how many reviews on Yelp and
TripAdvisor are fake. We do know
that it’s easy and cheap to buy fake
reviews.” He says it is important
for people to have an alternative
to user reviews. “Our data comes
from people whose job it is to review
hotels. By aggregating reviews
from 20 different publications, we
produce a TripExpert Score that
accurately tracks hotel quality.”