Travel website’s reviews criticised

An ADVERTISING watchdog has told the travel website TripAdvisor it could not claim that all of its reviews were written by real travellers.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said claims that all reviews on the site were genuine were “misleading”.

The ruling came after complaints highlighted statements on the TripAdvisor website which claimed: “Reviews you can trust”, “read reviews from real travellers” and “more than 50 million honest travel reviews and opinions from real travellers around the world”.

The complainants said TripAdvisor did not verify the reviews and therefore could not prove that they were genuine or from real travellers.

The ASA upheld the complaint and said that, as reviews could be placed on the site without verification, it was possible that non-genuine reviews could go undetected.