Reviews and the Culture They Incentivise are Harmful to Society
This is an opinion article mainly composed of observations of having worked in the hospitality industry post internet.
With things being online primarily it becomes easy for people to do things and act in certain ways they were unable to before. This is no more evident than in the culture of reviews. Although not nearly as pertinent to the customer as it used to be (many people have realized most 1 star reviews tend to be dishonest and unfair - with some outlying exceptions) however it is still very relevant to employers and company owners as it serves as a metric to gauge how efficient and well off one’s business is in the eye of their customers.
First of all discussing the good that online reviews do would make the most sense to establish why they exist and have been used for years now. The main reason is they allow people to realize if they are investing into a scam, or if they are purchasing something that was not as advertised. It’s “the customer’s voice” as it were. It allows people to be heard publicly and not let their complaints get tossed to the side by shady business owners or managers who don’t want to get in trouble. On paper reviews are a noble way for the public to voice their opinions loud and proud for all to see. This writing isn’t about getting rid of reviews all together, as they work well when applied in the correct context. The easiest example of this - although not exactly reviews - was the YouTube dislike button. (Before it was hidden away of course) as the button allowed for users on the site to realize if the video they were watching was made in good faith or if it was a scam. This application of reviewing is actually very effective, and YouTube really should revert their decision to hide the dislike count as it is increasingly hard to spot scams on their platform now more than ever.
While in the context of YouTube I find the removal of the button foolish, in the context of a hotel or perhaps even restaurants I think it would benefit people more than it would hurt. The useful applications of reviews were well placed initially however as they continued the value of a review inflated due to standards in these industries (in particular in the hotel industry) being raised infinitely. Once websites like Tripadvisor and Expedia began becoming the standard way to plan a trip up it became much more blurred on if reviews were actually worth their weight in gold due to how the industry reacted to this new environment. Good reviews meant these websites would recommend the hotel more, being recommended more meant the hotel would make more money from people traveling. It is now at a point where a hotel cannot effectively run without partnering with Expedia or something like it in order to increase traffic and turn a profit as the ease in which booking on these sites made it much less of a hassle to plan a vacation for just about everyone. These websites have created a cycle that has caused small businesses to either pay their dues or go defunct entirely. Sometimes doing so at incredibly high prices, making most hotels that want to survive give into this review culture.
This culture has caused hotel chains to introduce some wild policies to incentivise customers to stay with them and to manipulate these customers into writing good reviews. They also introduced more methods into their rewards programs to encourage customers to book directly to skip an OTA(Online Third-party Agency) entirely. A good example would be Hilton. In my time working at a Hilton property the strangest policy they had was that elite members were able to push through sold out hotels in order to get a room they desire. Meaning someone else who may have had their reservation for months will be walked to a different property which at times meant forcing people to travel to entirely different towns just to sleep. What this means in the big picture is that your reservation at a Hilton hotel is never actually guaranteed, if an elite member of their rewards program wants a room they will have it no matter what. The worst part about this policy is that the responsibility of walking a person falls onto whoever is working the front desk - at least at that property. This means a few things. The employee who is likely not paid enough to begin with is suddenly put into a situation that they are certainly going to experience incredible stress for no other reason than to support a predatory rewards program that is designed to make customers feel like they are more important than they are, and in turn manipulating them into brand loyalty and farming good reviews.
There are many situations where a customer’s problem was so minor that normal people would genuinely scoff at them for demanding money back beyond say $20. There was a time - I kid you not - that an elite member demanded their night comped because the luggage carts were all being used by other customers and they had to wait for one to be freed. Not only that, but they actually got some of their money back. Thankfully it wasn’t entirely comped, but they were still given about half of the room charge back - simply because the person was impatient. Now I know this reads more like a rant about crappy customers I’ve had in the past, but bringing these things up is important for why reviews are the main issue plaguing this industry. This behavior is a lot more common than you’d think.
Review Inflation:
I’d like to throw back to something I mentioned briefly in the beginning of this passage, the effect of review inflation and why it has effectively negated the benefit of reviews as a whole. This is because most people who stay at a property without incident give it a 10/10 - 5/5 or just overall a review of flying colors. More often than not without any comments, or brief ones mentioning something they may have liked. On the flip side, when people who stayed at a property with any kind of incident they will likely give it a 1/10 - 2/10 - or 3/10. Things that sometimes aren’t even in the hotel’s control. This became particularly clear when COVID became a problem for the industry. Many hotels no matter their locale had to enforce wearing masks due to the nature of having so many people coming in and out. This made reviews become a “statement” of sorts for those who were not inclined to wear masks. You would see tons of reviews pop up saying “1/10 good place but they made us wear masks and I don’t support that” and other disapproving reviews. The main problem lies in how hotels look at reviews in every context.
To put this in a broad perspective: Top tier reviews are considered the standard. Anything below a 9/10 is considered a failure. Anything below a 5/10 is a critical failure and brings down the hotel's average horrifically. Since a critical failure is FAR more skewed than the standard, any 1/10 review will completely ruin a hotel’s performance average for that respective month and that average is used almost directly to gauge how well a hotel is performing. With one of the only other factors being money - but keep in mind that earlier as I said better reviews mean more money since the hotel is seen more online. Because most people review in black and white terms this means no matter how many 10/10’s you get, even just a small handful of 1/10’s will completely destroy a month's average review score regardless of context and in turn could heavily ruin some people’s livelihoods who don’t deserve it. Especially becasue if just one or two of these 1/10’s are due to the mistake on account of an employee, that employee is then directly responsible for fucking up the entire average for that month, and I assure you guests staying at these properties - especially on the wealthy end of things - make a point of mentioning who specifically they hated by name. This can be why you see decent hotels, sometimes even good hotels with a high management turnover rate (among other reasons of course). The companies that run them are setting them up for failure because of how inflated reviews have become.
These hotels are asking you to review your personal experience at the location, however the review in the context of a customer is asking you to review the hotel as it stands in comparison to others. Which again skews the average even further. This is a severe miscommunication. The only way to maintain a decent standard in the hotel workplace would be to hold reviews to a much lower standard, and encourage people to form their own opinions about locations. To have management companies incorporate context into reviews, and be willing to dismiss bad reviews when applicable. As well as encourage hotels as a whole to step away from OTA partnerships, and to stop treating the elite customers as if they were royalty, and instead treat them as what they are: loyal customers who we may go above and beyond for, but still maintain a line in the sand that we do for any other customer.
All of this is to say: if you’re a person who gets a kick out of going around and reviewing places constantly, you’re part of the problem. Most experiences don’t deserve reviews, that’s just a simple fact. Don’t be one of those people, you’re not helping anyone, and when you - being extra critical of everything - inevitably have a bad experience you will not be able to help yourself. Just enjoy things, put your phone down and chill the fuck out.
This was my rant about stuff no one cares about :)
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