FLorida Hotel Owner Plans On Suing TripAdvisor.com

Volusia County, Fla. -- A Volusia County hotel is threatening legal action after a website listed the hotel as one of the dirtiest in the country.

According to state officials the report by TripAdvisor.com paints an inaccurate picture of conditions at The Desert Inn Resort.

The owner Dennis Devlin showed WFTV his hotel which is located on Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach.

Devlin said he’s furious at the travel website, which advertises reviews from travelers.

“When they put someone on a list you think they’d at least do an onsite inspection to verify what they’re saying is true,” said Devlin.

Some of the reviews said the Desert Inn Resort has roaches; however, the hotel just passed a state inspection which looks for sanitation and safety violations.

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Related articles

• "Daytona hotel ranks No. 3 on TripAdvisor's "dirtiest hotels" list" and related posts (blogs.orlandosentinel.com)
• TripAdvisors top 10 dirtiest hotels for 2011 (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)
• Duncan Bannatyne to campaign against 'cowardly' TripAdvisor (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)
• Can you trust those online hotel reviews? (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)

Can you trust those online hotel reviews?

It has become the traveller's champion, a first port of call for holidaymakers in search of the warts-and-all truth about hotels and a place where they can let off steam when things go wrong.
But the world's largest travel website, TripAdvisor, is facing a searing backlash from hoteliers who claim it is rife with inaccuracies and fraudulent claims about their properties concocted by phoney reviewers.

This week, it was slammed as "despicable and cowardly" by BBC Dragon's Den panellist Duncan Bannatyne after he complained that a "dishonest" review compared his Charlton House Spa in Somerset to Fawlty Towers. He demanded that it be removed.

The website has also incurred the wrath of a growing number of Irish hoteliers over claims that it refuses to remove dishonest and defamatory reviews from its pages.

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Related articles

• Duncan Bannatyne to campaign against 'cowardly' TripAdvisor (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)

2011 Dirtiest Hotels around the world

See the lists from TripAdvisor
Asia
Europe
India
United States

TripAdvisors top 10 dirtiest hotels for 2011

NEWTON, Mass. — January 25, 2011 (Hospitality Business News)— TripAdvisor®, the world’s largest travel site*, today announced the top 10 dirtiest hotels in America, according to traveler ratings for cleanliness on TripAdvisor. Now in its sixth year, and true to its promise to share the whole truth about hotels to help travelers plan their trips, TripAdvisor names and shames the nation’s most hair-raising hotels.
This year, the tarnished title of America’s dirtiest hotel goes to Grand Resort Hotel & Convention Center, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The southern belle hotel failed to charm TripAdvisor travelers; 87 percent of those who reviewed it recommended against staying there. The unpopular property elicited such hotel review titles as “Worst Hotel Stay of My Life,” “Stay Anywhere Else But Here,” and “Absolutely Horrible!”

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Duncan Bannatyne to campaign against 'cowardly' TripAdvisor

Duncan Bannatyne, the Dragons’ Den panellist, is to spearhead a campaign against the “despicable and cowardly” TripAdvisor website after it refused to remove a review comparing one of his hotels to Fawlty Towers.

The Glaswegian entrepreneur said the internet giant was risking the livelihoods of dozens of hoteliers and restaurateurs thanks to its policy of publishing all reviews it receives.

He said he is considering suing the site over what he claims is a “dishonest” review published about one of his hotels and accused the internet giant of trying to “bully” him into silence using threatening letters


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TripAdvisor blocks Google Places from accessing its hotel reviews

TripAdvisor confirmed that it blocks Google Places from accessing its hotel reviews. According to TripAdvisor, it believes the user does not benefit with the “experience of selecting the right hotel”.
TripAdvisor reviews of hotel properties, alongside reviews from other providers, were streamed in as part of bitesize summaries of individual reviews, with a link to follow in order to read the full review on the TripAdvisor site.
TripAdvisor would feature next to reviews from online travel agencies or other hotel booking sites, but given its page rank in organic search, often found itself at the top of the list.

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TripAdvisor slaps Red Badge on hotel for writing own reviews

The Clare Inn Hotel & Suites from Dromoland, Republic of Ireland, was issued with what is known as a Red Badge – a large red box placed again the hotel’s page on TripAdvisor to warn users about the validity of the reviews as they may have been written by the hotel itself.

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