In its 29-page"2019 TripAdvisor Review Transparency Report" TripAdvisor revealed that it received 66 million reviews last year. Of that number, 2.1 percent, or nearly 1.4 million reviews were found to be fake.
The report comes on the heels of a damning study released by UK-based consumer group Which? Travel earlier this month that slammed TripAdvisor for failing to stop a flood of fake and suspicious five-star reviews and artificially boosting hotel properties around the world. After reporting 15 of the worst cases to TripAdvisor, the platform acknowledged that 14 of the hotels had already been caught with fake reviews in the last year. In 2017, Vice also published a report by writer Oobah Butler who admitted to being paid by restaurant owners to write fake reviews. To prove his point, the writer then mounted a fake restaurant, The Shed at Dulwich: AKA his backyard.