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If you read the "analysis" done, it's anything but. Taking a quick look at a few hotel reviews--confined to Hawaii--and then making an assumption, is not the basis for anyone to start pointing fingers at TripAdvisor.
Studies have shown that consumers are reluctant to leave reviews--with some stats suggesting only a fraction of people ever leave a review--which often accounts for why you only ever see one review by an individual. In addition, we tend not to leave reviews unless we are extremely happy with a hotel, or extremely unhappy--that's why you see more of these type reviews than those that are balanced.
I have not conducted my own analysis of TripAdvisor recently, though if you are interested, I did author a white paper a few years back that did include a look at TripAdvisor. Neither am I currently retained by any hotel or TripAdvisor for that matter--so I have no dog in this fight, so to speak.
I will agree that any site that offers consumers the opportunity to leave reviews without any accountability, is open to abuse, but claiming 50% without any scientific evidence sounds more like attention-seeking, than any sincere effort to help fix the problem.
For myself, I try to look for trends in sites like TA. I ignore the extremes. I.e., if a dozen reviews say a place is OK, while one reviewer trashes it because his room service was 5 minutes late, I'll ignore the angry guy.
Actually, comanies are now being busted for it. See this article on Travel Weekly:
"Cruise Critic taking some heat
Fallout from the revelation that the Royal Champions, a group of frequent cruisers who routinely post online comments about Royal Caribbean, was in fact organized by the cruise line has created a furor within the community of the popular website CruiseCritic.com.
According to an article on Tripso.com by Anita Dunham-Potter, CruiseCritic.com, a subsidiary of TripAdvisor (which is owned by Expedia) worked with Royal Caribbean to facilitate the creation of the group, despite TripAdvisor's policy to work diligently to delete self-serving posts from industry suppliers.
To read the story, and Royal Caribbean's response, click here: http://www.tripso.com/columns/a-contagious-virus-marketing-campaign-sinks-cruise-critic/ "
I don't think Beat of Hawaii's point is to be a "sincere effort to fix the problem". It's not their job to fix it, only to make consumers aware that it's going on so they can be diligent.
And as a current upscale travel agent, I'll even suggest that travelers consider this trick - use a good travel agent for an important vacation. We're a big agency and we know what the scuttlebutt is on the good/bad hotels. That's our job.
Josh
www.joshfriedmantravel.com
joshfriedmantvl on twitter
For those who don't know of Aarvark travel forums you should check them out. Initially I was turned off because the post Nazies were over zealous about killing what looked to be spam but now I appreciate it. Businesses can answer questions but not advertise and are watched across forums like a hawk.
Josh, as far as your recommendations to use a travel agent, there are just as many bad travel agents as there are bad hotels so the logic doesn't hold. Do you post all bad reviews of your company by your clients on your site? If not then why would we believe you either? Travel companies only post good testimonials and expect me to believe that all their clients think they're good. The reason we have places like TripAdvisor is we're supposed to have unbiased reports from customers.