More schizophrenia from TripAdvisor

This week TA launched their 'Rave reviews' widget.* So what do we make of it? 

Let's let Christine Peterson of TripAdvisor have the first word...

“TripAdvisor’s Rave Review product makes it quick and easy for business owners to showcase their well-earned, positive reviews to potential guests.”

And TripAdvisor's own website...

"These widgets feature a selection of up to 10 handpicked, real traveller photos and/or a rotating selection of the most recent rave reviews (that is, reviews that are rated 5 out of a possible 5) of properties in your location. Users can click to a pop-up to read more detailed information about the featured property."

Our take...

We think there may be a conflict of interest here. TripAdvisor unashamedly promote themselves as a consumer site. And here they are effectively saying to hotels "Pay us, and one of the benefits will be that you can show [only] 5 Star reviews on your site." Surely that's not in the consumer's best interest?

We have a feeling that this widget has been introduced because hotels were quick to see through TA's last effort - the widget that showed the last X number of reviews posted - a disaster if one of those was a 1 Star.

We think the previous solution was fair to potential guests, but unfair to hotels. This is the exact opposite - the elegant solution (as long as you're happy to have potential guests clicking away from your own site - something regular readers of this blog will know we don't advise) would be to combine the previous version with Dialogue.

*We cannot find a live example yet - on TripAdvisor's site or a hotel's site - as soon as we do we'll let you know.