The famous ‘reviews you can trust’ slogan has been removed from TripAdvisor’s website, and been replaced with ‘reviews from our community’.
This follows allegations made by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) over that bogus reviews have been posted on the site.
A investigation has been launched concentrating on were the reviews can be trusted – claims that the post were made by ‘real travellers’ could not be substantiated.
It is thought that between five and ten million reviews could be fake, KwickChex.com has had up to 2,000 hoteliers approaching them feeling they have been incorrectly reviewed and claiming the site can be misleading.
The website which helps more than 45 million consumers fin hotels each month is alleged to have refused to remove deceptive posts and does not substantiate its reviews or verify its users.
Kwikchex argues that this means TripAdvisor is not as reliable as it declares.
However, the travel website was prompt to state that the alteration to the website was not an outcome of the ASA investigation, but a decision made before it was even launched.
Emma O’Boyle, a spokesperson for TripAdvisor, said: ‘The “reviews from our community”, which is now visible on the hotel pages, is part of our evolving communication efforts, this time highlighting our commitment to our all-important community.
‘The description of TripAdvisor as a trustworthy source of travel advice and information remains used in other parts of the site, and by example you’ll still see this wording on the homepage.
She added: ‘This evolution was carried out across all domains gradually from June to August this year, first appearing in the UK on June 27, 2011.’
KwikChex’s co-founder Chris Emmins, said the company had recently found more cases of hotels being the target of false negative reviews, and subsequently being ‘red flagged’ by TripAdvisor.
