The TripAdvisor Effects: Should we trust all online reviews we read? And are the famous Fairey Pools in Scotland a made up story from tour guides?
TripAdvisor has been in the news this week with breaking story across media sites about how one London man managed to get his garden shed listed on TripAdvisor as a restaurant then through a series of fake photos and reviews earned the coveted #1 ranking for best restaurant in London. If you haven’t heard the story, there are four articles below that you can get the details of, and it’s a good story. But what is the after-affect of this? Will it make people question or wonder more about the accuracy of online travel planning websites with ratings and reviews, such as TripAdvisor?
Articles:
VICE: I Made My Shed the Top Rated Restaurant on TripAdvisor
Forbes: TripAdvisor Get’s Totally Punked When Fake Restaurant is Ranked #1
Fortune: How an Entirely Fake Restaurant Became London’s Hottest Reservation
QUOTES:
“The Fairy Pools became so famous and popular basically on the combination of a made up story from the guides and the age of internet sharing you know coming into collision.”
“Me and Danny put this to the test one time on Skye, because we were being followed”
“Ach – monkey see monkey do”
“So the tour that you chose it’s called the far remote North Coast. Why did you expect that to because the coffee’s up here?
“But the appeal the reason that people come to Scotland is that there’s not.”
“The Fairy Pools are not special. The reason that people wrote on the internet about the Fairy Pools is because they remember the story we told them. That’s what was special.”
3 TAKEAWAYS
(1)Tourists have Monkey-See / Monkey-Do habits
Tourists tend to follow other tourists. While it can start at vacation planning by choosing destinations, hotels, and activities based on ratings of others, it continues into the vacation often with mindless tourist photo safari mentality that has so many people taking pretty much the exact same photos. In the podcast episode, James shares an entertaining story of monkey-see monkey-do tourist habits about people following tour busses, and mimicking behaviors they see others do.
(2) The internet is drastically shaping travel and setting expectations of tourists.
Travel booking sites with robust ratings and reviews like TripAdvisor are hugely influential for travelers for travel planning, for better or for worse. On the good side, what am amazing library of places and information, very helpful and valuable to anyone looking to plan a vacation. The flip side? Trusting reviews fully, when in reality all of us have different views, opinions, and personal preferences. This could mean that a 5 star review for 3 day Isle of Skye tour might not even describe that tour, but instead focus on a cup of coffee the person liked. So why did they give it a it 5 star? To somebody else, it could have been the most horrible thing in the world and make them want to write a 1 start review, “we’re in the far north and went to this stupid coffeehouse…..”
(3) “The Fairy Pools” on Isle of Skye was a story made up by tour guides
Ten years ago it was mainly budget backpackers who traveled out to Scotland’s more remote island and highland areas such as the Isle of Sky. Today, there are busloads of tourists and many rental cars with visitors visiting the area. And what do people yearn to see? Famous places with stories around them, like the iconic Fairy Pools which have been photographed, reviewed, and blogged about all over the internet. But, according to this pioneer tour guide who has led tours to the area for more than 10 years, there was not a place in the Isle of Skye named the Fairy Pools, until guides started to call it that. It was tour guides who gave the name and story to the Fairy Pools, and boy did that story stick! What began years ago as a story to share with groups of backpackers, has today evolved into a place topping many ‘must see’ lists for Scotland. So many visitors attempt to go there, that James notes it’s not even possible for guides to park their busses, all they can do is drop people off and point the direction they need to walk to find the Fairy Pools.
THINKING OF VISITING SCOTLAND?
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES:
Hello everybody. It’s Laura here with the Amidlife Traveler podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today as we continue to share Scotland through the voice the mind and the opinions of a Scotsman named James. Today’s episode is really interesting to me, as a person who travels and who explores the world both from a independent traveler perspective but also from a tourist perspective. Sometimes I do my own trips and independent vacation planning, sometimes I just join local guided tours in places I visit, and sometimes I just book a packaged vacation from the start.
About the guest host: James has worked as a tour guide in Scotland on-and-off for the past 10 years and over that time he has seen a lot of change. He has seen a lot of change in the type of travelers visiting Scotland, the expectations visitors have once they arrive, and how online review sites such as TripAdvisor are impacting travel planning.
Today, James share his opinions of how touring and travelling has changed over the years as more and more people discover Scotland. And particularly how and review sites services like TripAdvisor can sometimes lead to monkey-see, monkey-do mentality among tourists.
The part of the conversation that you don’t hear recorded that happened right before this recording starts. In the pre-conversation, podcast host Laura had been describing her theory to James about tourist photo mentality and how most people just show up and take the same photo of the same place from the same perspective. In part, her theory is based on internet pre-travelling planning that shows things like, “10 great things to do here” or “5 must see sights there”, that results in people showing up with that checklist of things that they feel compelled to visit and photograph. It’s a way of proving we saw those ten things or we did those five things while we were there.
In this episode, you will hear James share his experiences and opinions on how online review sites such as TripAdvisor are impacting people’s travel expectations, plus the changes in Scotland tourism over the past 10 years, and finally the shocking revelation that Scotland’s iconic Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye got it’s name and earned it’s fame across the internet.
For the record, we think tools like TripAdvisor are great – they are incredibly useful research and discovery tools for vacation planners. That said, we shouldn’t always believe that what we read or hear about is the same truth for us. For example, as two people leave a movie theater one may be wiping their eyes from tears and claiming it’s the best movie of the year, while the person next to them thought the movie was stupid and didn’t like it at all. What happened? They both saw the exact same movie, but had opposite reactions based on their personal knowledge, likes/dislikes, and interests. The same goes for travel. Just because one person loved that one tour and it was perfect for them, doesn’t mean that it’s perfect for everyone.