If you are the owner of a hotel, bed and breakfast, restaurant or similar hospitality venue and you are having problems with negative TripAdvisor reviews then probably the first thing to know is that you are not alone !!

Recently I was told about a lady who owned a bed and breakfast and who had a nervous breakdown after a bunch of local competitors decided to gang up on her and post loads of negative reviews on TripAdvisor.

A very common story is when a disgruntled ex-employee decides to get his or her friends to post negative reviews on TripAdvisor or simply does it themselves. After all you can be pretty well completely anonymous on TripAdvisor and it is very unlikely that each post is reviewed or acted upon by TripAdvisor as they suggest.

One of the biggest problems is that people will say things via electronic media ( email, SMS, blog posts etc ) that they would NEVER say to your face  – including ” You’re ditched ” !

Also, people who have an axe to grind will invariably make more effort to post something on TripAdvisor and similar sites than those people who are happy with the food or service they received. In fact there is a view that reviews are typically polarised to the extremes of those that are either VERY happy or VERY unhappy.

Surely people should not be allowed to post fraudulent or defamatory comments ????

What does TripAdvisor itself say about Fraud on it’s website ????

http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/what_is_considered_fraud

What is considered fraud?

Reviews of accommodations, attractions and restaurants should only be written by TripAdvisor members that have had a customer service experience that they want to share with the community.

The following actions may be considered fraudulent:

– Attempts by an owner (or agents working on behalf of the ownership of a property) to boost the reputation of a property by:

• Writing a review for their own property
• Asking friends or relatives to write positive reviews
• Submitting a review on behalf of a guest
• Copying comment cards and submitting them as reviews
• Pressuring a TripAdvisor member to remove a negative review
• Offering incentives such as discounts, upgrades, or any special treatment in exchange for reviews
• Hiring an optimization company, third party marketing organization, or anyone to submit false reviews
• Impersonating a competitor or a guest in any way

– Attempting to damage his/her competitors by submitting a negative review.

Bottom line: Any attempt to mislead, influence or impersonate a traveler is considered fraudulent and will be subject to penalty.

What you will notice is that this is all VERY biased towards stopping owners of hospitality venues from promoting themselves and virtually ignores individuals ( ” customers ” ) posting fraudulent or defamatory comments.

So, in these challenging economic times with everyone trying to get ” the best deal ” or ” a discount ” Tripadvisor is a ” deal getter” or ” discount merchants ” dream !

Want to ruin your ex-employers business ??? Just get all your friends to post bad reviews !

Want a discount ? ? Threaten the owners with a bad post on TripAdvisor unless they give you one !

What CAN you do as an owner of a targeted hospitality venue ??

As this post suggests you can ask TripAdvisor nicely to remove what you believe is a fraudulent review:

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Remove-a-Fake-Negative-Comment-From-TripAdvisor

You could also, as the owner of the targeted venue, respond to the negative review posted on TripAdvisor. This may or may not be published depending on whether TripAdvisor decides to allow your response or not. If you do post responses then you need to be in the right ( cool ) frame of mind to do so and may need professional ( Reputation Advisor or PR person ) help.

You could do one of the things that TripAdvisor tells you is fraudulent e.g. Get some of your friends to post positive reviews to counteract the negative and fraudulent reviews. Obviously I am NOT telling you to do this !

You could also establish a blog ( alongside your website ) that is optimised for /orientated around being found for Google searches on e.g. ” Reviews of Your Hotel “. Search Engine Optimising ( SEO’g ) and blogging are skills/experience that you may not have but there is information about this on this blogsite and if you still need help please contact me.

I will also add links to helpful web and blog sites as I come across them – below.

In the U.K. if defamatory information is posted on a U.K. web or blogsite you can write to them and ask them to remove that defamatory information. If they do not then they become liable themselves to a legal action for defaming you.

Unfortunately e.g. U.S. based websites are not liable in the same way.

However websites like eBay and PayPal have adopted new ways of resolving criticism’s of sellers and buyers in recent times including those situations where someone is defaming someone else.  Issues are resolved using ” Online Dispute Resolution ” and ” Community Courts ” ( Courts comprised of peers ) .

I recently witnessed the eBay Online Dispute Resolution making a decision about an eBay sale and purchase dispute. From what I could see the ” Community Court ” reviewed the information and communications that had occurred and then made a final and binding decision.

There are a number of legal representations being made to TripAdvisor at the moment on behalf of some very large hospitality businesses and the objective of these legal challenges is to be able to do something about defamatory reviews being posted fraudulently.

It is not clear what the outcome of these legal challenges will be but there is a view that TripAdvisors whole business model is at risk if it does not do something about this issue.

I am always searching for ways to describe how new media marketing works to the business people that I talk to.

My latest thought was that you could describe it’s implementation as a sort of whirlpool effect where your potential customers are out on the calm sea and you want to catch thier attention at  the outer influence of the whirlpool and then draw them gently in and then steadily down towards you – the supplier of products, services or information.

One of the main features of this type of marketing is that it is about ” Pull Marketing ” and not ” Push Marketing “. You are drawing potential clients very gently into the whirlpool and not pushing them in !!

We live in an increasingly self service world: We like to be in charge of who we buy from and deal with and we don’t much like things being pushed at us or people being pushy.

The numbers of people using the Internet to find what they want are increasing all the time. The types of things that they search for are growing all the time.

The old ways of marketing are not necessarily dead but they are suffering from a terminal disease.

Traditional ( Push ) marketing is still happening – advertising, PR, mailshots, telemarketing – it’s all still going on and it’s all still effective to some extent but more and more and every day Internet and Word of Mouth Marketing ( accelerated by the Internet ) are rising to the ascendancy.

I also think that in catching peoples attention at the periphery of the new media whirlpool you think more about people’s problems, needs, desires, objectives and questions and you lead them gently to solutions, fulfillment, destinations and answers. There is tremendous subtlety, patience, intelligence, kindness and humour in this new media whirlpool approach. Generally speaking the ladies are good at it because they often have these traits in spades. It is natural for them to deal with people in that way.

Thinking about the old Features, Advantages, Benefits sales approach you are again thinking about the potential benefits and advantages to people rather than hitting them with almost meaningless features.

You certainly need to have thought through what your core offerings are and who your target markets are. However then, you need to think laterally about what people might be thinking about or searching the Internet for and what might strike a chord with your target market. Definately you need to put yourself in the mind of the person who might be your client.

So, the way that you might attract people at the very edges of your whirlpool might be by posting a video on YouTube. Maybe something funny or shocking or maybe something informative. You might also post thoughts and useful information in  your blog. You might post a Press Release on an Internet Press Release site. ( By the way all the time that you are doing these things you have at the back of your mind the key words and phrases that your target market will be using to find someone like you ). You post things on Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter and again some are funny, some light hearted, some are informative and some are serious. Of course you still try to get into various publications and press ( many of these have online variants now ).  You list on relevant directories. You publish white papers ( as you did before ). You make your products and services clear ( as you did before ). You maintain a clear and consistent brand ( as you did before ).

Floating out at the edges of the whirlpool each of things are having thier own effect in terms of attracting peoples attention and drawing them closer to you. The YouTube video gets it’s own YouTube audience but also signposts the way back to you or your company. The blogs, PR’s, Social Networks etc all do the same.

Each of these things link back to your main website and to your email, phone number, fax number and ultimately to you.

Literally as people come within the sphere of your whirlpool the current gets steadier and stronger. Not in an unpleasant or imposing way but in a friendly and helpful way.

By the time they meet you they know quite a bit about you. They know what you believe, what you stand for and what you believe. They have, to some extent, a relationship with you.  They may even have exchanged Facebook messages with you briefly before they have spoken to you.

Then we consider that when there was only Traditional Sales and Marketing we always did our best to empathise with our potential clients – to make our advertising relevant; to make our telemarketing about creating a relationship; to tailor our mailshots and letters to our target audience; to have our salespeople ask questions and listen.

It always was and is about walking in thier shoes and understanding how they they think and feel and what they are likely to want and need. It is just that now we have this amazing thing called the Internet to communicate with our potential customers in words, pictures and videos.