Story by Jessica Fryman ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

The Internet isn’t the scary, unknown place it used to be. For the most part, people trust it for their banking, shopping, social networking and vacations. While booking trips online using interactive searches, convenient comparisons and Internet-only prices has become the norm, for some it’s still a toss up whether the increasingly popular traveler reviews are reliable or the forums merely are sounding boards that exaggerate bad experiences.

TripAdvisor.com boasts more than 35 million “honest” travel reviews from travelers in 70,000 cities. Users also can post questions on the site, and 98 percent of those are answered by other users within 24 hours. With reviews that cover more than one million businesses around the world, the site is by far one of the most popular online travel guides. Countless other websites offer similar services.

One local couple uses niche sites about boating hot spots to help plan their outings. Kenosha residents Bob and Lyla Hermans, both 65, travel to the east coast where their boat is docked and rely on forums for advice and information. They said commentors provide their names and plenty of detail, and they’ve never run into any problems trusting the online advice.

“They’re fairly trustworthy,” Bob said. “It’s pretty accurate.” Some find it hard to trust other sites that are predominately anonymous, though.

“Everybody has a different opinion,” said Racine resident Silvia Zimperfeld, 55, who books hotels online but doesn’t give too much thought to the reviews.
Others could be concerned about the possibility of made up or unauthentic reviews, which a local travel agency owner warns about.

“You have a lot of competitors who can sabotage a very good product,” said Tom Karnes, owner of LaMacchia Travel Agency in Kenosha. Of equal concern, he said, would be the potential for employees writing reviews to falsely enhance a lousy product.

Of the travel review websites, though, Karnes notes that he finds TripAdvisor to be the most accurate in his business experiences. And his assertion could very well be true.

Policing the siteTripAdvisor.com, the world’s leader in online travel booking, calls the idea that nobody polices reviews a misconception. TripAdvisor.com enforces a variety of safeguards against illegitimate reviews and penalizes businesses that participate in posting the inaccuracies, according to Amelie Hurst, the site’s spokeswoman based in San Francisco.

“I think the key thing is that that attempts of this nature are actually very rare,” she said. “The vast majority of businesses understand there’s a tremendous risk to their business if they attempt to post fraudulent information on sites like TripAdvisor.”

TripAdvisor.com screens posts before they appear online through an automated technological tool that flags suspicious reviews. The large community of the site’s users also help moderate reviews by reporting suspicious posts that slip through the cracks on the first check. Then, a quality assurance team investigates all of the reportedly fraudulent reviews on the forums, Hurst said.

The website also labels businesses’ information pages with a warning if inaccurate posts have been associated with a company, which deters businesses from participating in posting unauthentic reviews. The popularity ranking of a business also could drop if the quality assurance team finds illegitimate posts. TripAdvisor.com does not have data regarding how many false reviews have been posted to its site or how many businesses have been given a label warning, Hurst said.

“We certainly do take the authenticity of our reviews very seriously,” she said.  “We have numerous methods in place to ensure all of the material on TripAdvisor is legitimate ... We have a huge base of loyal travelers who regularly come to TripAdvisor. It is because of the trusted traveler reveiews that we enjoy this loyalty.”

Travel agents offer more
Karnes said if consumers choose to use online travel forums such as TripAdvisor.com, they should give more credit to reviews that list specific dates and experiences, but he thinks that online advice still doesn’t replace the value of a trained travel agent.

“A good travel agency incorporates new technology of online trip advisers for what we sell and provide to our customers,” he said. “But if you were to break it down there are three main reasons why you would want a travel agent: It’s experience, service and knowledge.”

Travel agents visit hot spots all over the world, Karnes said, and can offer customers first-hand advice about attractions, tours and specific vacation packages.

TripAdvisor says its advice comes from a more collective audience because its reviewers are travelers from around the world. Agents, however, have the advantage when it comes to understanding customers’ needs.

Karnes remembers a customer who was adamant about booking a vacation package and hotel seen online, despite an agent suggesting other options that seemed to suit the family’s needs better. The family returned to LaMacchia after the trip and said they checked out the agent’s suggested hotel while on their vacation and should have listened to the travel agent rather than an online tipster. In short, a website can’t get to know a consumer face-to-face and suggest options based on personal experiences with customers like a travel agent can.

“The reasons you need a travel agent translates to you as a consumer as the difference between an OK vacation and a great vacation,” Karnes said.
Despite the benefits travel agents offer, the Internet has put many travel agencies out of business, he said.

He said too many people have the misconception that booking trips online is cheaper, while many travel agencies offer free consultations and comparable prices for packages. However, since the recession hit most consumers’ wallets, their time, money and vacations became more valuable and a shift is starting again, Karnes said. Wanting to eliminate any guessing and risks associated with booking online, he said the cash-strapped public is slowly starting to turn to travel agencies again.