Is IHG surpressing negative reviews on its website?

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• Melvin says:

  29 Apr29 April 06:23

  IHG sent me questionnaire a year or so ago and because i could earn some points i thought why not? I started to complete the process but increasingly found that it was so biased and would not let me answer negatively. It would ask questions like:

  Do you think IHG are:

  a) great
  b) greater
  c) superb
  d) OMG, this hotel chain is excellent.

  I gave up in the end, i didn’t need the points that badly!

• Xmenlongshot says:

  29 Apr29 April 06:24

  I suspect they aren’t the only hotel chain doing so. Others often show positive reviews feeding automatically from TripAdvisor – I’m sure they suppress anything below 4 stars.

• PeacefulWaters says:

  29 Apr29 April 06:49

  If it’s not on Tripadvisor, it didn’t happen.

  • Genghis says:

    29 Apr29 April 06:51

    I’ve heard stories about TA suppressing negative reviews too but I’ve never had anything rejected and I’ve left a few shockers.

    • Peter K says:

      29 Apr29 April 10:53

      I regularly review on TA (87 so far) including some truly damning ones. Only had two rejected, both because I had been to the place and reviewed it less than 3 months previously, so fair enough.

• wayne sambrook says:

  29 Apr29 April 06:55

  I believe the removal of poor reviews is becoming commonplace in all areas not just hotels, I’ve had suspicions for along time. Even so called independent sites who have some promotional revenuel/interest are being ‘censored imho. I also go along with ‘new’ scoring system & have done similar

• Phil says:

  29 Apr29 April 06:59

  IHG do it all the time , and on TripAdvisor too. We stayed at the intercontinental Hong Kong which was surrounded by a huge building site with all the dusts and noises associated. Wherever I placed a review it always took days to get a response and breached some rule or other so never got published.

  Maybe HFP could set up a similar site but not allow hotel owners to manage or filter reviews

• Sam Wardill says:

  29 Apr29 April 07:01

  I left a 3 star review for Holiday Inn Duxford Cambridge in November because of the poor wifi. They gave me 10,000 points when I complained about the unpublished review but still didn’t publish it. I therefore gave them a 1 star review on TripAdvisor! I told Rob about this at the time. Glad it finally made an article.

  • Fenny says:

    29 Apr29 April 10:23

    Damn! I should have written a review of the HI Rome I stayed in last summer. The wifi was a complete nightmare and the staff agreed. Even the paid for version was dire and they refunded my payment on the grounds that I’d not been able to watch GoT!

  • Barry cutters says:

    30 Apr30 April 01:04

    I can see that hotel from my house

• John says:

  29 Apr29 April 07:01

  My approach to hotel reviews is to only look at the 1 star ones and to read those in languages other than English or the hotel’s language. Filter out things that are not really the fault of the hotel and then see if there is a pattern of problems that would actually impact me.

  I don’t need to read endless gushing of praise for what is basically a building of glorified bedrooms with overpriced restaurants (going back to the IC HK article, it sounds like a stroke of genius to make it “unpleasant to leave the hotel” so that you spend more money there – if there is one thing you don’t need to overpay for in HK it is food).

  Also reading reviews only really differentiates between two hotels that are located and priced similarly. I am not going to pay 50% more to stay in a place which scores 4.8 versus 4.2 just on the basis of the reviews, but if I would, then I have already made the decision without needing to consult any reviews. (On the other hand, if the more expensive property is the one with 4.2, then the choice is obvious)

  • Callum says:

    29 Apr29 April 08:02

    I’d be much more inclined to ignore 1 (and 5) star reviews than to specifically seek them out! Hotels are rarely perfect or without redemption in my experience.

• JamesB says:

  29 Apr29 April 07:03

  I don’t get why anybody would want to read hotel reviews on its own website in the first place, this would be akin to reading tbe ‘news’ in the express, the mail, the telegraph, the times and the sun, or trying to watch it on the BBC.

  • Sam Wardill says:

    29 Apr29 April 07:13

    Many people do read reviews on IHG website which is why IHG take the very high risk strategy of censoring them. They also censor their Facebook page. I just reposted this article to IHG Facebook and was told it would appear if approved by the owner (so fat chance of that happening). I hope we can accentuate the downsides of this sort of strategy so they decide to improve the hotels and sort out the issues instead!

  • Callum says:

    29 Apr29 April 08:11

    Yes, clearly the BBC have become one of the most respected news outlets on the planet by providing fake and/or significantly biased news… Let me guess, you don’t like the absence of gushing praise for Corbyn?

    • JamesB says:

      29 Apr29 April 08:46

      Hardly, BBC is fine but I wish they would improve their editorial policy on domestic political issues.

      • Callum says:

        29 Apr29 April 09:07

        To fit more with your personal political beliefs? Perhaps that assumption is unfair, but I don’t see any other way to describe it!

        Though I don’t really see how they can simultaneously be “fine” yet not a good source for news?

  • mark2 says:

    29 Apr29 April 08:22

    You forgot the Guardian, Independent and Channel 4 News (Guardian TV).

    • Callum says:

      29 Apr29 April 08:43

      I don’t think they did. Like many people they seem to be deeming any news source that isn’t biased towards their point of view fake. Same reason right wingers go on about the crazy liberal BBC and left wingers go on about the establishment BBC being in the pockets of the Conservatives.

      This could therefore also be my bias talking, but opinion pieces aside, the Guardian, Independent and Channel 4 don’t seem to lie about the news unlike the Mail etc. A clear bias to the left yes, but still broadly accurate.

      • JamesB says:

        29 Apr29 April 09:04

        It’s not so much about the bias, that I can live with because it is very true perception of bias depends where one stands. For example one camp believes BBC is anti-brexit, the other camp thinks it’s the brexit broadcasting corporation. I also accept media are left- and right-leaning depending on their ownership and readership. What I do not accept is the hatred, slander, jingoism and inflammatory headlines that frequently graces the front pages of many of them.

    • JamesB says:

      29 Apr29 April 08:43

      I’ve never read the Guardian but I don’t find myself offended or despairing of their front pages like I do the others. The independent I thought no longer existed. I am more inclined to watch the C4 news but it’s not really any better than the others.

  • Mr Dee says:

    29 Apr29 April 09:16

    Agree, all these media outlets have their own agendas and all are restricted to an extent of what they will publish for fear of backlash and approval from the powers that be.

    • mark2 says:

      29 Apr29 April 15:56

      And the views of their readers

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