Fake TripAdvisor reviews by guest house owner

[Travelfairy]

Posting here for traffic.

Just back from a holiday which involved a stay in a few different hotels/guest accommodation. All beautiful apart from one. It had excellent Google and TripAdvisor reviews. I wasn't worried at all. Then we arrived 🤢
It was filthy, black mould in our bathroom, broken radiator hanging off a wall, smoke detectors broken and in a drawer in a dresser...I could go on and on. Major hygiene and health and safety issues. We left early as did the other guests staying there. On closer inspection on TripAdvisor it seems the reviews have mainly been given by accounts which only submitted one review. In other words it looks like multiple accounts have been made to solely post reviews.
Is there any way to report this to TripAdvisor? I would hate anyone else to have the experience we did. Its also extremely expensive. 2 of the other properties we stayed in that were 4 star beautiful hotels were a fraction of the cost of this.

Of course there's a way. Go back to the dodgy reviews and click report.

I hope you exchanged details with all the other guests ........ you did do that, didn't you?

Yes and they are going to report also. I thought reporting was only on behalf of establishment. I will definitely do this. Thank you

Of course report.

But in future, do a deeper dive. Look for lots of reviews, some not positive, over a long time. Also look for helpful votes and other indicators of someone who posts a lot. Look at traveller photos and see if they look like holiday snaps or professional ones. Look at the place’s responses to reviews. Tripadvisor do ‘check’. They sent an email to be recently asking if I had been paid for reviews. I said, ‘no’. Which is exactly what someone would say either way!

Then compare to other platforms; booking.com, Expedia, google reviews. Look for the bad reviews and see if they are reasonable. I learn much more from the bad reviews than the good ones.

Sorry you had a bad time.

Weird. I wonder what I did to get put in the naughty space!

What did you write? 🤣

It's reappeared. I think it was the linky dinks.

This is the thing. Google reviews & TripAdvisor all excellent but these are new owners this past 2 years. Not many recent reviews and in hindsight looks like the recent ones are almost all fake. I think they are trading off good reputation of previous owners.

I will be more diligent going forward though definitely.