[DrScump]

I found similarly bogus ratings issues with both Booking.com and TripAdvisor.

Had I taken a closer look at the patterns of reviews (as I've learned to do with Yelp), I would have realized the preponderance of fakes. Ratings are all over the place. Numeric scores are inconsistent with comments. Vast majority of 8+ reviews are one-time reviewers, and a bad review is immediately followed by multiple high reviews the same week.

In the Booking.com case, the primary photo is phony (a different property -- room is wrong configuration). Many reviews refer to nonexistent features. The few negative reviews paralleled my experience very well (this place was a D-I-V-E, by far the worst I've stayed in anywhere in North America).

[paganel]

TripAdvisor used to show photos of the properties taken by what looked to be actual past visitors, in all the cases I was involved in those photos matched my ulterior experiences with said places. And, yeah, like almost all the reviews-based websites out-there you have to learn to filter through the fake reviews. I'm European and as such travel mostly to non-English speaking countries, and you can spot those fake-reviews pretty well if they come from the owner or his relatives/friends, as they tend to make the same grammatical mistakes. I admit, in North-America things might be different in this regard.

[smueller1234]

If you suspect a fraudulent property, ratings or images on booking.com, please report that. Personally, I've never come across any, but I know we've had such cases. In all such cases I'm aware of, the fraud was dealt with quickly and effectively.

Disclosure: I work for Booking.com albeit neither in the hotels facing department nor customer service. Managed fraud ops and security ops and eng years ago. Do not speak for the company.