Upscale Hotels Plant Fake Reviews When High-End Vacation Rentals Come to Town
Photo Credit: Style Spotlight Townhome for booking as a short-term rental in Houston Texas on Airbnb. Source: Airbnb. Airbnb
Skift Take
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That may be why high-end hotels tend to stop planting fake negative reviews about each other online once nicer short-term rentals start competing locally.
Many hotels have for years posted fake negative online reviews to undermine their hotel rivals. But premium hotels tend to change their tactics whenever premium short-term rentals start competing in their market, according to a new study. The upscale hotels instead start posting fake reviews that tout how wonderful their hotels are.
“More pressure from Airbnb causes high-end hotels to increase their ratings with more fake positive reviews," said study co-author Cheng Nie, an assistant professor at Iowa State University, in an interview.
The switch to inflate hotel ratings was charted by a study of 2,188 hotels in Texas across eight years. The academic journal MIS Quarterly recently published (paywal
