I received an odd message today from the general manager of a Crowne Plaza Hotel. She asked me to delete a hotel review I left on TripAdvisor nearly five years ago, well before the current management took over the property.
Putting aside the author’s horrible, HORRIBLE grammar and spelling, I can sympathize and understand why a hotel manager might want to have old reviews deleted. When I stayed at the property, it was a Radisson. Today, it’s a Crowne Plaza. But on their site, TripAdvisor has simply renamed the hotel listing and incorporated into the reviews.
I’m torn here. Despite my sympathy for management who’s stuck with their predecessors’ bad reputation, why would I delete an old review? It was accurate when I wrote it. There’s clearly a date on the prose, so a reader can opt to dismiss it for its age. And the review wasn’t even that bad: while it was a middling review for a middling hotel, I’ve certainly experienced (and written) worse.
I’m also slightly skeptical of the request, because I’ve lost a lot of faith in TripAdvisor over the last few years, as some suspiciously enthusiastic (shill?) reviews have piled up. I used to trust the site; I no longer do, because it’s seemingly being gamed by hoteliers. Call me cynical, but getting old reviews deleted is a possible precursor to a positive-review blitz by management.
So what would you do? I’m putting up a poll at the bottom of this post, and I would love to hear what you think. Vote, and hit the comments!
The text of the hotel manager’s message is below, with the poll below that. And while it’s probably identifiable for determined googlers, I’m editing out the name of the property and the manager. The rest of this message is all hers, though…
Good Morning,
My name is B****** ******** and I am the General Manager for the Crowne Plaza **** ******, we became a Crowne Plaza in October of 2008, when you stayed with this property it was not under the same owenership nor franchise, it was a Radisson Hotel managed by Remington Corporation, can you please contact Trip Advisor.as our Hotel the Crowne Plaza **** ****** truly works extremely hard to provide excellt Customer Service l we have called and emailed Trip Advisor and are working on eliminating all of the emails prior to our obtaining ownership, we would also love for you to return so that you can enjoy the great customer service we are known for in this area, we are the winners of the 2009 Intercontinental Hotels Meetings and Excellence Award for North America and our team is extremely proud of our customer service.Many thanks
B****** ***********
General Manager
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February 22nd, 2010 at 9:29 pm
I would leave the old review in place. The new managers have the option of responding to the negative reviews, indicating that the property is under new ownership. They’d earn points in my book by thanking those who left constructive criticism on TA, enabling the new management to target areas that needed improvement.
February 22nd, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Leave it up. Nancy is exactly right: The general manager can respond to the old reviews, even if they weren’t their problem.
It sure took the hotel long enough time to get around to making these corrections. Changed owners in Oct 2008, they say… 16 months later, they’re worried about their reputation?
Weird. Just weird all around.
February 22nd, 2010 at 10:40 pm
I would be willing to delete but why not ask for a free stay to judge if changes have been made first? Maybe take a long weekend stay if they pay for it and give a new review based on their new management. I don’t know if she would be willing but asking won’t hurt anything.
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:36 pm
I don’t think I would delete, even if just because that sets a bad precedent. I certainly understand the new management’s predicament. In fact, the restaurant I work at is in a similar boat, but retroactively changing comments seems a bit Orwellian. More broadly, I guess this is an issue that needs to be evaluated on such sites going forward. Maybe there could be a little icon “under new management!” next to the name.
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:49 pm
It’s important to leave it up. How else will folks be able to assess the progress the new owners have made?
That’s one of the things I watch: how are the reviews trending?
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:01 am
I am a bit suspicious of the poor spelling and grammer… so consider rechecking your source….
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:42 am
Leave the comments. They were accurate. Most reasonable travelers can tell when a property name change has been made. Most reasonable travelers will also view most if not all of the comments for the past year before making up their minds.
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:18 am
Leave it up, anyone can see the date and decide it it still fits. Since you have lost faith in TripAdvisor because of these kinds of issues, do you have another site for hotel reviews that you trust?
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:05 am
Normally I would leave the review in place (management changes all the time, the review is dated, and they have an opportunity to respond) but in this case, it’s not just management but a whole new brand and parent hotel group (Holiday Inn vs. Carlson). In this case it’s really a different hotel, just like a new restaurant in a space formerly occupied by another restaurant.
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:14 am
TripAdvisor has a few “holes” in its system. None as easily corrected by them as this one! Places change over 5 years like Mark Ashley’s view of TripAdvisor – he says it is not a trustworthy as it was. New owners, managers come along and make things better or worse and TripAdvisor should make it easy for us to see – that’s why they are in business, to reflect the expectation of service and quality for the next prospective user.
I have proposed before that TripAdvisor should create a 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 year window of reviews. Helpful for the consumer to see how things are progressing and to the hotel, restaurant or airline to see, how their quality programmes are progressing too.
I have also proposed the TripAdvisor has a “super user” group review, which only reflects reviews from power users of the system. A review section which includes reviews from those who have done 10 or more reports, in any one type of review (Travel, Restaurant or hotel).
As an hotel operator, I would want to exclude past reviews from my record if I had aquired a new property. Scoda cars had a past poor record which has been turned by VW, so too can a poor operation in hotels, restaurants and travel operations.
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:57 am
Don’t delete the review. Hotel management can respond to it, they’re sorry that you had a bad stay years ago before the hotel was even a Crowne Plaza, they’ve put lots of $$ into it in renovations and they’re a completely new management team so give us another shot, you won’t be disappointed! Yadda yadda.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:40 am
Like you, I rarely trust TA reviews. They seem to come from the overly pleased (shills?) or the overly upset. In the latter group I mostly see vacationers, not frequent travelers.
That said, I’d be much more likely to trust TA or any review site that does not allow deletions. I’d be OK with aged out after 5 years or so.
Finally, a comment on an old review that says “under new management” followed by newer more positive reviews would have me totally disregarding the old comments.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:06 am
I don’t see the point of leaving in place reviews which effectively apply to a different hotel. It has changed both name and management/ownership – what is the relevance of the old reviews now?
The current owners can respond to ancient reviews only if the old owners did not already – they can’t add anything new if there has already been a response. Even if they can reply, what can they say other than “Please disregard this review as it does not refer to this hotel”?
In these particular circumstances, the old, outdated reviews muddy the waters.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:09 am
TripAdvisor is the real villain here. If I understand correctly, a hotel could be burned to the ground, rebuilt under a different name, and under new ownership, but TripAdvisor would still keep all the old reviews, just because it’s the same address. That sounds like what’s happening here, but that’s really dumb. So I would delete it, out of sympathy for the new hotel owner, but I would write a note of complaint to TripAdvisor, indicating that theirs is a stupid policy.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:46 am
Some great comments here. I’ll respond in more detail later, but here’s something else to chew on: The TripAdvisor policy FAQs include this:
The request was indeed sent to me through the TripAdvisor Private Messaging System — I got an e-mail that a private message was awaiting me upon login to TripAdvisor. So it sounds like the message was a violation of policy. But the “moral” question remains, I think.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:23 am
I agree that TripAdvisor should make it their responsibility to understand that reviews are dated to a certain time period and that old reviews should not carry the same weight as newer ones.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:57 am
What I’m really curious is if you are skeptic of tripadvisor reviews, what site are you using to replace tripadvisor?
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:18 am
I would leave it up. When I use Tripadvisor I can tell the fussy “peice of lint on my bed wrecked our stay” from those who offer constructive and real feedback. I will often ignore comments left even as little as 6 months previous to the time I intend to stay there anyway.
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I would leave it. They have every opportunity to note that the property is under new management and that these old reviews predate them. I’m touchy about only seeing good reviews. My hubby and I got burned elsewhere last summer overseas. I didn’t know it at the time, but only good reviews were posted. It wasn’t TripAdvisor, but it makes you wonder how honest is everyone being. I want all the facts to consider for myself before I choose to stay somewhere.
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I usually find it pretty easy to tell when old reviews are no longer relevant. If I see a hotel had a bunch of terrible reviews, but has since remodeled or undergone new management (usually listed in the description or on their website) and the recent reviews have been favorable, then I can put two and two together and realize which reviews I should trust.
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:13 pm
The grammar and spelling in the note are so bad that I would avoid like the plague any hotel who had this person as a manager. If I were inquiring about a room, I would immediately delete this hotel from a list of potential places to stay. The note is stunning in its illiteracy. A person this poorly educated, as an ambassador for the hotel, would succeed in frightening me into any other available hotel!
Leave the review posted, it is an accurate reflection of that hotel at that particular time. Revisionist history is bad. The truth is always best.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:44 pm
We all recognize that each review is a mere snapshot in time; frankly, I think “outdated” reviews are helpful since they reveal something of a time line, history, or chronology of a specific hotel or resort. You can really get a sense of a downward/upward/consistent arc of an establishment.
Finally, I would say “Caveat emptor.” If I were to make a decision about a hotel based on a good/bad/indifferent review that is dated or even old, I get what I deserve.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Thanks for all the great comments and the many votes.
@Suzie, no I don’t think I’ll ask for a free night. Not only is the hotel in a part of the country I don’t really care to visit for fun, I wouldn’t feel right soliciting a freebie.
@Lee, I like the idea of an “under new management!” sticker-like image in the reviews. It makes sense, and even if there are programming challenges, I’m not sure why TripAdvisor hasn’t implemented anything like this yet.
@Jim, I agree, trending of comment quality can be a helpful gauge of a property.
@Guest, the spelling is indeed terrible, but the source is confirmed. The person who sent the note has left management responses for other reviews on the same property page.
Which reminds me, and touches on comments by Gary, Diane, and others: I’m wondering why they haven’t simply responded to my review — like I said, it’s not a terrible review by any measure. It’s not super-enthusiastic, but it’s hardly a trashing of the place.
@Karen Kinnane, I like your standard for choosing a hotel… Now, if we could only get a pre-reservation writing sample from ALL our hotel managers…
@David Wood and @S A, TripAdvisor has been under fire for some time for the validity of many of its reviews. Little has changed. Do you really think there’s hope for them to change their ways?
@bobesi and @justanotherblogger, With regard to a TripAdvisor alternative, I don’t have any recommendations for an alternative. TravelPost.com is one site (owned by Kayak), but I’ve spent very little time on there. The number of reviews there often exceeds the number on TripAdvisor, but the quality seems lower to me. Others are invited to offer their alternatives (and views of TripAdvisor and TravelPost) here in the comments.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
I guess I am with the minority here. Imagine there was a crappy old pizza joint that closed, and you rented the store and turned into a nice bistro. Wouldn’t it be utterly unfair if your Yelp rating was in any way influenced by the pizza joint’s rating? Clearly it doesn’t make sense, and the review site shouldn’t put the burden to respond to some other restaurant’s review on you. Besides, the response doesn’t change the score given by the reviewer.
As others have said, it’s a flaw in the TripAdvisor system, but in the interest of fairness I’d pull my review.
Oh, and the spelling and grammar skills of the writer, while clearly not impressive, shouldn’t play a role here.
Come to think of it, given the way TripAdvisor has evolved, I’d just wholesale pull all my reviews of their site… if I had any
February 25th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Oh, and make that “off their site” before anyone criticizes *my* spelting abilities
February 26th, 2010 at 3:32 am
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February 27th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
I would have to agree with nearly all of the posts, I’ve seen so far, and I would stick by the original comments. I would however, try to give this hotel another shot, when staying in the area, and if they have improved substantially, I would make a second “Trip Advisor” review noting the improvements and changes, if any. This way your comments would be truly reflective of your past experience, but give the new team a fair shake at making thier own impressions.
September 30th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
There are too many fake, libelous and malicious reviews on Tripadvisor – so much so that thousands of small lodgings will not survive the depression we’re in. Disgruntled people who refuse to pay for extra services, do damage – the type of people you would not have taken a reservation from if you knew it was going to take 3 days to get the room ready for renting again…..
Tripadvisor should give more respect to property owners and listen to their side of the story also – or face a mega lawsuit. So far, only the individuals who commit libel and malice gets sued – and most of them take the review off before a lawsuit can start. Tripadvisor is the culprit – luring the individual into believing he has the right to public libel people personally and businesses also.
The only businesses Tripadvisor treats with respect are those who pay them the annual fee. MONEY.