ONE OF the State’s largest hotel chains planned a campaign involving “a bank” of people aimed at generating false positive reviews on the influential TripAdvisor website.
Internal communication seen by The Irish Times indicates that the Carlton Hotel Group encouraged dozens of employees and other nominees to post positive reviews of the chain’s 10 hotels to TripAdvisor.
According to the email, sent to at least 29 employees in the summer of 2010 and copied to the hotel group’s directors, the group wanted “a more pro-active management of the reviews on Trip Advisor” and it said a plan had been agreed which would see managers nominate five people from each hotel to post fake reviews.
The mail, sent by the group’s sales and marketing head Jean O’Connell, said 150 “TripAdvisor Posters” would be contacted by senior hotel staff and told which hotel they were to review and given a timeframe in which to post. “By pooling TA posters it will give better flexibility and IP addresses will be from across the country,” the memo said.
General managers were also asked to appoint someone “to take a minimum of 30 photographs that reflect the excellent product you have and key USPs you want to get across. Not professional photos but good quality from a digital camera is fine.”
Posters to the site would have “to be capable and agree to post a positive reply approx each quarter as requested”. They were forbidden from using “a Carlton laptop/PC of any kind” and would be expected to post photographs sent from head office. “An improvement each month across all hotels will be expected with particular focus on the hotels that are deemed to be underperforming,” it said.
Ms O’Connell confirmed last night she had sent the email but said it was only a proposal and the policy had never been implemented. She said that it had been drafted in response to what she claimed was “evidence of fake reviews” about their hotels. She said at a further meeting sales staff were told to ignore the policy and insisted that if TripAdvisor went back over the reviews of the hotel, “it won’t find any evidence of fake reviews.
Trip Advisor’s communications director Emma Shaw said a “full and detailed investigation” was under way and the company had “a zero tolerance approach” to such activity.
Eversheds solicitors, writing on behalf of the hotel group to The Irish Times last night, said: “Our client instructs that the content of the email is a misinterpretation of the intention of the Board which was at all times to encourage positive posts from happy guests and not to in any way encourage employees of our client to publish posts on the TripAdvisor website relating to our client.
“Immediately following the email being sent, steps were taken by our client to contact the hotel managers to explain that a mistake had occurred and to confirm how hotel online reviews were to be handled. Thereafter the online marketing group of our client met on August 4th, 2010 to discuss the corrective measures that had already been taken by our client in response to the misrepresentative email of 14 July 2010.
“In so far as our client is aware, the actions referred to in the email of 14 July 2010 were never acted upon by any employee of our client and is unaware of any such posts being made on the ‘TripAdvisor’ website by employees in the manner suggested.”
