Holiday review sites

Almost everybody loves to go on holiday. However, nobody likes to arrive at his or her holiday address and find out that the destination or the accommodation is a disappointment.

Thankfully, nowadays we don’t have to rely on positive descriptions and amazing pictures in holiday brochures. There are many websites where you can read and write reviews of your holiday destination or accommodation. People seem to have more faith in the reviews by other travellers than in the information that is available at the travelling agency. 

 I for instance would never book a holiday without checking the Dutch holiday review site Zoover. And if I am really honest, I usually look at the reviews at Tripadvisor and Holiday Check as well. I guess you could say that I am a bit of a “review junkie”.

But what makes us trust other traveller’s reviews?  I found a very interesting study on this subject. The results show that there are four important factors that influence the choice of source and their perceived trustworthiness. These factors are called the “trust factors”.

The first factor is expertise; this means that the source has to have relevant expertise about a accommodation or destination. The second factor is experience; for instance people who have visited multiple all-inclusive resorts are more reliable sources while reviewing a all-inclusive resort. Affinity is the third factor; this means that people find reviewers more reliable if they have the same characteristics, standards, viewpoints and demands as the review seeker. The last track record is the track record of the reviewers; review seekers find reviewers more trustworthy if the source has previously provided successful reviews to the review seeker.

 

Source: Heath, Mr Tom and Motta, Professor Enrico and Petre, Dr Marian (2006) Person to Person Trust Factors in Word of Mouth Recommendation. In Proceedings CHI2006 Workshop on Reinventing Trust, Collaboration, and Compliance in Social Systems (Reinvent06), Montreal, Canada.