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Is IHG surpressing negative reviews on its website?

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IHG, the parent of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental etc, publishes traveller reviews on its website for each of its hotels.

For some time there have been rumblings on Flyertalk about bad reviews mysteriously disappearing after being submitted.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a HfP reader contact me.  He had stayed at the new – well, rebadged from Kensington Close Hotel – Holiday Inn Kensington High Street.  

My understanding is that this hotel – room photo below, although I believe refurbishment is underway – could not be more of a dog if it had four legs and barked.  (I told this to an IHG executive at Christmas, this comment will not surprise them.)  It still averages 3.9 out of 5, however, from reader reviews.

Kensington Close Hotel

According to our reader:

I had a terrible stay at the Kensington High Street HI and wrote a suitably scathing review once the automated system asked for it after my stay.  They then deleted it. Refused to publish it. Refused to send it back to me. Just want the whole thing to “disappear”. They deny it is censorship, but can’t find an alternative word to describe their actions. I am escalating a complaint with them that they cannot do this and have to take the bad with the good if they host a review service. It is is very dishonest practice to delete the bad ones and just leave the good reviews.

One Flyertalker, who submits regular reviews, stated that he never grades below a ‘3’ because that is likely to see the review disappear.  His own grading of rankings is:

Overall score of 4.6 is great
Overall score of 4.3-4.5 is ‘nothing special’
Overall score of 4.0-4.2 is ‘hit or miss’
Overall score of 3.9 or below is ‘avoid at any cost’

On this scale, the Holiday Inn Kensington High Street is correctly positioned – it averages ‘3.9 or below’ – but the casual reader of ihg.com may not see it that way.

Another Flyertalk member submitted a positive review of a property but did mention that it had bedbugs.  He got the following response:

Your review has been rejected.

As a valued guest, your concerns are of the utmost priority. Therefore, rather than posting your review, we have alerted our Customer Care Team. One of our agents will be reaching out to you immediately. We apologize for the experience you had at our hotel, and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Here is a report from a Flyertalk reader who wrote two reviews back to back:

Holiday Inn – Birmingham – 1 star Review (IMO) – Still Pending 2 days.
Staybridge Suites Birmingham – 5 Star Review Submitted 10:45 – Approved and Live 14:00

It isn’t certain that IHG is filtering out bad reviews from its website.  You don’t need to be a sceptic, however, to believe that you shouldn’t take everything that appears on a corporate website with a grain of salt.


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Comments (82)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Frank Hoyle says:

    I left a negative review for an IHG hotel and it was rejected twice a being not relevant to the hotel. I edited to be a little kinder. Same result.

  • Craig Vassie says:

    They always weed out negative reviews. its been going on ever since they offered the opportunity to leave a review!

  • lostantipod says:

    My most recent review of an IHG property in London has posted: I had some gripes , rated the property a 3 overall (staff got a 2 from me but other aspects got 5). So clearly not all reviews with negative comments are being removed.

  • Brasov says:

    Surpressing?

  • Alex says:

    Without any prejudice – positive or negative – towards IHG, I think that the problem with negative reviews is that they are not always adequate and fair. People often write them in anger and one hiccup of a stay could make them rank the hotel with 1 or 2, even if other aspects of their experience were ok. This often happens with TripAdvisor and other similar ‘independent’ review websites. I remember when someone on TA gave a five star property (non-IHG) 1 point because a toy vending machine in the lobby was broken and his child was unhappy about that. Fair? Obviously not.

    So, perhaps, the IHG customer experience team rightfully tries to reach out to dissatisfied customers to address their concerns first and not simply publish their reviews? At the end of the day, this is the job of a customer service, no? And after the matter is settled, the customers who used their reviews just to flag their problem, would no longer need to get it published or would like to amend it.

  • Andrew says:

    I really don’t like or trust 1* reviews.

    Every time I read one, I can’t help but wonder why the guest wasn’t more assertive at the time of the stay (in a major brand hotel) and what they are hoping to achieve with the review.

    Many times, over the years, I’ve found myself standing at reception asking the staff for a vacuum cleaner and cleaning materials in order I can clean the room properly – on each occasion, I’ve found myself enjoying a few drinks at the bar whilst a member of staff does what should have been done after the last check-out.

  • Talay says:

    As a fairly litigious sort of person, I believe I would probably sue if I had evidence a hotel chain was deleting poor reviews and thus displaying a biased appraisal of their property which directly enticed me to book to stay with them.

    Probably only a money claim (MCOL) in the UK but I’d relish them attempting to conjour up a response to get out of jail without letting the cat out of the bag.

    If we don’t fight back, they’ll do it every time.

  • Wobbly Wings says:

    A coupe of mildly negative reviews I left a couple of years ago never made it to IHG. All positive reviews were posted. I stopped contributing and do not much trust the reviews on the site. It’s probably true that anything under 4 should be seen as suspicious.

    They are a PR exercise and a way to try and contrast TA (which has lots of problems itself). It’s their site – they can do what they like and they are under no obligation at all to post what the users submit.

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