As someone who spends sometime going over the reviews for Nile Cruises and hotels in Egypt on the site this is a subject close to my heart. I use to tell clients "would you believe anything a stranger advised you if he walked up to you in the street?" but at the same time if a prospective client sees a good or several good reviews on a holiday he was interested in, it is most likely to have an effect on whether he books or not.
As a tour operator/travel agent, the rules on what I can and cant do on Trip Advisor are quite tough but pretty much boil down to no advertising or soliciting of your own products, which is quite fair but of course companies and organisations will always look at ways to get around this, hence bogus reviews etc, and the problem is there no way that Trip Advisor can check everyone that posts a review. I ask my own clients who have sent me a good feedback if they wouldn't mind putting this on Trip Advisor but for some reason most do not, why I don't know.
The forums for each destination are in some ways now a better way to glean information/ideas about a prospective holiday. Most seem to have their own "destination experts" - who in Trip Advisor's own words - are the backbone of the TripAdvisor community. They are regular contributors who exemplify the best of our forums - and their level of knowledge is generally high normally because they visit their destination so often or have lived or live there.
That said, in the case of Egypt, when some of the posted questions/comments are as follows, you wonder why they would want to reply:
What side of the plane to sit on?
Are Jeans ok in Soho Square?
However recently with the latest problems in Egypt including the deaths and riots at the football match at Port Said and the kidnapping of 2 American tourists last week and other smaller issues it seems that both Trip Advisor and some of the destination experts are having some problems.
Whilst it is completely understandable that many people going to Egypt want to find out information about whether it is safe to visit at the moment etc, Trip Advisor has closed some topics and removed a number of posts on this subject that "did not meet their guidelines". Several had a number of comments, many from destination experts where they had slightly descended into arguments about who could say what which is unfortunately always going to be the case where you have "experts" offering their own comments, but still they were talking about the safety issue.
The overall feeling is that Trip Advisor seems to be getting much tougher on what it will allow anyone to say even if it can effect their safety as opposed to asking "if jeans are ok?" which cannot be good. If they carry on like this it could start to affect how many people want to carry on contributing as destination experts or even posting questions if they feel that Trip Advisor will censure them.
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