Even as TripAdvisor recently removed a new user-ratings feature from its website because of supplier complaints, it added Wyndham Hotel Group to its stable of hotels that post TripAdvisor reviews on their own sites.
Additionally, Expedia, TripAdvisor's former parent, revamped its hotel-reviews sections, further reflecting the growing role user-generated reviews play in hotel-room demand.
TripAdvisor, which started collecting numerical-only reviews for destinations late last year, began posting those results late last month but removed them on March 2 -- less than a week later -- because of the complaints.
Travel-technology website Tnooz reported that a surge in the number of reviews from people who hadn't previously reviewed destinations in particular regions raised suspicions that some suppliers may have been trying to game the new system.
"We have some work to do to ensure that ratings are as useful as they can be," TripAdvisor said in a statement, adding that the new ratings weren't factored into TripAdvisor's Popularity Index. "We will continue to look at ways to gather these opinions to help travelers plan."
The decision to remove the new ratings is the latest challenge for a 12-year-old company that draws more than 50 million monthly unique users.
Last month, TripAdvisor reported that its fourth-quarter profit jumped 19% from a year earlier, but the company disappointed investors when it said that 2012 earnings would be little changed from 2011 because of its website redesign, less profitable websites in developing countries and lower click-through rates from Expedia.
But TripAdvisor gained a victory of sorts when Wyndham Worldwide said it would post user-generated reviews from TripAdvisor on its websites. The company's Wyndham Hotel Group is displaying TripAdvisor reviews on the Wyndham Rewards loyalty-program website and will add the reviews to the sites of other Wyndham brands later this year. Wyndham's brands range from its upscale eponymous badge to budget brands such as Howard Johnson, and Travelodge.
Expedia, meanwhile, upgraded the hotel reviews on its website on March 8. Among other improvements, Expedia streamlined the review-writing process for end users while enabling them to post their own photos of certain destinations and target their reviews toward particular types of travelers such as families or adventure-seekers.
"Concern over review authenticity is certainly a controversial topic within the travel industry," said Douglas Quinby, senior director of research at PhoCusWright. "But consumers continue to place a very high value on reviews in the decision-making process."
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