TripAdvisor: Too many reviews to verify

Christine Petersen, president of TripAdvisor for Business, vouched Friday for the veracity of the thousands of hotel reviews on the company’s site.

“The No. 1 thing we stand for is the authenticity of our reviews,” she said during a general session at Best Western International’s annual convention. “We know if people come to the site and don’t believe the reviews, they won’t come back. And if you don’t come back, we don’t have a business.”

Petersen declined to identify all of the ingredients of the “secret sauce” TripAdvisor uses to identify honest reviews from those that are paid for, or negative comments intentionally posted by a hotel’s competitor. She did, however, list several of the factors the company looks for when deciding whether to boot a review from the site.