Tripadvisor used to be an invaluable resource when travelling. You'd occasionally come across some wacky reviews, but these were easy to ignore. Sadly in the last few years it's been completely flooded by fake reviews, which are bought by travel businesses on an industrial scale in Pakistan, India or the Philippines. If you look at many (if not most) travel businesses in, to name a few, Mexico, Morocco or Egypt you will realise most of their reviews are 5*, fake, and written by posters who have only written 1 or 2 other contributions. They will sometimes even include photos supplied by the company itself.Tripadvisor claims they have a zero tolerance approach to this, but they clearly happily tolerate it, especially from businesses who sell their products directly through them, earning them commission. The "report a review" button is completely pointless and nothing happens.I can only recommend being very very careful about highly rated businesses and check who has written their reviews. Always look at the more negative ones too - if someone who has written 300+ reviews was unhappy, that is probably a good indication of how that travel business actually operates.Edit: see their reply below - completely ignoring the issues and pretending they gain nothing from positive reviews - what a farce!
