by Prof. Dr. Klaus Jamin

Have you ever been disappointed with a hotel you booked? Were the rooms dirty, the service unprofessional, did the staff not know a single word of German or English? If so, you have certainly filed a written complaint with the organizer, often without response.

This is where hotel review portals come into play. They are often organized by private persons, although this cannot be verified. According to experts, there are around 10 review portals for tourism-related services in Germany, with many more in the English-speaking region. Since 45% of German citizens already use the Internet to do research prior to their vacations, those potential clients are of course going to end up on said hotel reviewing portals, as well.
In principal, this offers an optimal opportunity to warn fellow travelers of black sheep in the industry.
But these portals are also steadily gaining influence on travel choices due to their increased importance as a source of information. The increase was reported at 70% in the previous year. Most everybody, at least among those below the age of 60, will research what people on the Internet have written about the hotel they intend to book.

This has resulted in a loss of trust in travel agencies, unfortunately, for as soon as a discrepancy between catalog and the ratings submitted by a number of travelers has come to attention, the guest in question will not hesitate to speak his mind on the issue.

Among 74,194 hotel reviews on Turkish hotels, for instance, the users’ opinions on a certain 5-star hotel are stated quite clearly. To name a few examples:

- Relaxation and shopping far away from tourists
- Was pleasant, hotel has seen better days
- Four-star hotel, but never again with Airlines
- Don’t even think about it
- Hotel highly recommendable
-  good hotel – please do not book through major operators

Some of these reviews were read several hundreds of times. One can imagine that they would have a distinct influence on potential tourists.

Now, are these reviews neutral? Were they actually written by tourists, or rather by hoteliers or persons commissioned by them? This is of course not traceable, but experts expect fake reviews to make up between 10 and 20% of the total. Hoteliers assign marketing agencies, friends and acquaintances to praise the establishment. This is usually not recognizable, but flowery language (fantastic holidays, friendliest personnel and so on) may point to manipulations.

Certain portals, meanwhile, have been bombarded with cease and desist claims, others are filtering and deleting untrustworthy reviews.
In the end, one thing is certain – all reviews are subjective. As long as there is no internationally recognized system for awarding stars, a guest will only be able to review a hotel very subjectively. He will often not know about the respective country’s rating process and end up expecting more from a star hotel than it is required to offer.