TripAdvisor rejected my review of a B&B in the south of Italy. I shouldn’t have cared, but I did. I had taken the time to advise other travelers about a property that fraudulently promises attributes it does not have or offer. My review of Residenza il Barone in Tropea, Italy, is now posted on this blog almost exactly as uploaded to TripAdvisor, with photos. It’s also posted in a popup here on Hotels.com, the platform on which I booked our stay.

Why won’t TripAdvisor post my review?

Yes, I do care. I want to know what is objectionable about my review. What invalidates it? The replies I have received from TripAdvisor are a baffling series of robot responses that have nothing to do with my review. 

We cannot publish your contribution as it does not meet our review guidelines. Please only provide reviews based on substantial experiences you’ve had while traveling and be sure to include enough detail in your review that other travelers will find your advice helpful.

TripAdvisor, July 23, 2019

Wait. I stayed three nights in this place! I wrote substantial things about it! Before I realized I was communicating with AI (artificial intelligence; or artificial idiot), I wrote asking:

Why should Residenza il Barone be allowed to falsely advertise and book an accommodation on TripAdvisor? They claim, but do not have:
• A balcony.
• Air conditioning
• Toiletries.

Thiefhunter to TripAdvisor, July 23, 2019

Then, after another series of nonsensical emails about departments and forwarding and… just look at these, all in different emails:

• “Your request to TripAdvisor has been received…”
• “You replied to a TripAdvisor address that does not accept incoming e-mail…”
• “Please confirm that your received an email from TripAdvisor confirming you that you successfully submitted a review…”
• “We are unable to locate the review in question…
• “We are not exactly sure which review you are pertaining to…”

I finally got more emails that vaguely attempted actual reasons; however, they do not pertain to my situation:

• “We do not allow reviews containing second-hand information, rumors, or quotations from other sources. For this reason, we regret to inform you that your review cannot be published at this time…”
• “We do not post reviews that is not first hand experience…”

To select my hotel in Tropea, Italy, I researched on TripAdvisor. When I found Residenza il Barone, I clicked the View Deal link. I was transported to Hotels.com, which offered only an “apartment” and listed its attributes, including balcony, bidet, air conditioning, breakfast available, and free toiletries. Residenza il Barone is a B&B; it was not clear to me that I was being shown a property that is not, in fact, a B&B.

I booked the “apartment,” understanding that it was in a separate building. However, it did not have a balcony, functioning air conditioning, bidet, breakfast, or toiletries (not even a bar of soap).

Whyyyyyyy should I care about this? The trip is over. We enjoyed Tropea, if not the accommodation. Yet, I continued to attempt contact with a responsible human at TripAdvisor. Finally, from TripAdvisor’s “content integrity department”:

We use an automated filtering system that pulls aside reviews that may require special attention or which are flagged as possibly violating our review guidelines. It appears that your review was flagged by this system because it doesn’t comply with our submission guidelines. As a result, I cannot publish your review — and because our process is proprietary to our business, unfortunately I can’t share any additional details about why your review was filtered.

TripAdvisor Content Integrity, August 1, 2019

TripAdvisor continued to shower me with emails containing useful and relevant (haha) reasons for the rejection of my review:

• “Your review does not meet the guidelines, with that being said, we cannot publish the review…”
• “In order to provide useful and relevant advice for travelers, we do not allow reviews containing second-hand information, rumors, or quotations from other sources…”
• “We do not allow reviews that do not detail a substantial personal experience. As your review does not include any first-hand experiences about the facilities or services of the establishment, we are unable to publish it at this time…”

Whaaaaat? In the end, TripAdvisor advised me that “Your case is being handled by our highly-specialized team…” and “I’m afraid I can’t share information about our investigation process or the automated filters which aid us”.

Needless to say, my frustration had built too much to drop this without learning what triggered the rejection. I tried a phone call. Even that resulted in irrelevant robotic replies. Perhaps I’ll get a call back from a supervisor. If so, I’ll update this report.

Finally, clarification!

An eleventh-hour phone call from a supervisor, an actual human one, shed some light. My review used the word apartment and I had put that word in quotation marks. That, believe it or not, was the whole problem.

Apparently, an accommodation called an “apartment” belongs in TripAdvisor’s “Vacation Rentals” section and is kicked out of the “Hotels” section. Obviously though, I want it attached to the hotel (or B&B) that sold me the apartment, in order to advise future travelers.

And, my use of quotation marks signified to the moderators (I say robots, they say humans) that my review includes hearsay.

The supervisor suggested that I resubmit my review simply describing it as a room. Hmmm, that’s tricky, considering that it is precisely the “apartment” that I mean to warn others about. I have tried. I submitted a review today without any quotation marks, and without the word “apartment” (except for one instance I missed!). We shall see if TripAdvisor accepts it. If so, I will link to it.

9/6/19 Update

I sanitized my review and submitted it four more times. (I had missed an instance of the word apartment in one, and some quotation marks in another. In my final submission, I took the content-integrity supervisor’s advice and moved a different paragraph to the top “to trick the filters.” This last one took several days longer than usual to be rejected but, sure enough, it was, for the same old reason:

We noticed that your review for Residenza il Barone may not be submitted to the correct listing on TripAdvisor. A review must relate directly to the business to which it is submitted.

I give up. Especially in light of today’s BBC article, TripAdvisor defends itself in fake reviews row. “…in the case of one hotel in Jordan, TripAdvisor subsequently removed 730 of its five-star reviews.” In other words, TripAdvisor let 730 fake reviews pass through its brilliant AI filters. What chance does my legitimate review have if TripAdvisor’s artificial intelligence determines that mine is fraudulent? “We have fraud detection tools that are far more sophisticated…” said a UK based TripAdvisor official. Clearly, TripAdvisor needs some human oversight with the ability to bypass its filters.