Hamburg, Germany – 4 August 2017 –
Seven decades back, the bomb burst: An hotelier confessed to enormous manipulations in resort evaluations and the easy and systematic falsification of guest remarks. Today, seven years later – in digitalization, this is felt just like two decades – guest ratings are shot dead. Latest Revelation: A positive review of a literary guest prices just 12.95 euros in a web agency, revealed that the German newspaper “Tagesspiegel”. The standing is gone.
The various systems of Holidaycheck, TripAdvisor and OTA are, based on scales seasoned professional resort testers weak and vulnerable to barely comprehensible average scores. Since nullities and details are too heavily weighted and consequently the total score distorted. And: Provided that resort evaluations can be filed anonymously and immediately, abuse is so straightforward. Since portals like holidaycheck.de are finally positioning themselves as a booking portal – and no longer as a valuation portal with reserving purpose – the Gretchen question arises if one must be pressured to an e-commerce partner?
The signs that the first flowering period of the hotel tests could reach an end, goes much further. If even apprentices seriously ask why his new company so strongly rely on resort tests, this shows one thing: The authenticity is severely diminished. Lately, the Hamburg hotel manager Madeleine Marx was searching for: a blackmail attempt of two guests using the poor evaluations updates to reach, she left skilfully public. At least since then, the doubts concerning the system of guest ratings have become commonplace.
The future of this referral business is already ushered in: Facebook automatically asks if you are able to recommend an establishment to friends-followers – brief, lapidary or star, sun and opaque standards catalogs. “Recommend us further”, as an old motto gains a new significance. The social networking group of hoteliers are already responding to it – after all, the “critic” is usually immediately to spot.
But probably it won’t take long before this sort of recommendations is pushed to absurdity by bogus profiles of commercial web pirates.