Review Guidelines
In addition to our general community guidelines, we have specific posting guidelines for reviews. Reviews are posted to a property’s listing page and are associated with a bubble rating between 1 and 5. Ratings selected may have an impact on the property’s position in Tripadvisor’s popularity rankings and/or how a property appears on our platform.
A review on Tripadvisor should be an honest account of a traveler’s personal experience at or with a property that is listed on our site. As reviews are associated with a bubble rating and impact a business’s position within Tripadvisor’s popularity ranking they should include relevant, helpful tips for other travelers and members of our community and must be based on a first-hand experience.
In order to ensure each review reflects a first-hand experience, each user must have their own account and may not write on behalf of others or use another's account to submit, unless you're writing about the experience of someone in your travelling party at the same location as part of your experience.
The author of the review should be the person who experienced the property directly - either via a trip there, a booking, or by experiencing the facilities or some other service interaction. We will not post reviews from customers who only relay a brief phone conversation with a property or property representative.
If you did not experience the business as a guest or potential guest, we will not post your review.
To ensure that travelers are aware of serious safety incidents at properties we do have a few exceptions to our policy requiring a review to be first-hand:
- Death. In the unfortunate case of a death involving a business listed on Tripadvisor, one family member may write a review on behalf of the deceased. If more than one review is submitted, we will post the first review submitted until a more immediate family member submits a review. If at any time a member of the traveling party posts a review describing the incident, we will remove the submission from the non-travelling family member.
- Minors Involved in a Serious Safety Incident. Parents or guardians of children under the age of 18 when the minor is involved in a serious safety incident, such as an assault or serious physical injury, may write a review on behalf of the minor.
As we want the experience you write about to be your own, we do not allow information attributed to a third-party to be posted as part of your review. Specifically we will remove reviews that contain the following (no matter how minor of a mention):
- Quotes or descriptions from the media, internet or another guest/person that is not part of your traveling party. This includes, among many others, excerpts of laws, quotes from government agencies, food ratings or a news story.
- Information that you receive from a third-party after your experience with the business.
Exceptions to this guidance are (as long as they pertain to your experience):
- Anything communicated to you by a staff member of the business you are reviewing.
- Opinions or experiences of those in your traveling party.
- Minor references to recommendations received from other travelers, diners or locals - but not media - prior to experiencing the business.
- References to conversations and bookings with travel agents, booking companies and OTAs (Online Travel Agencies), as travelers often associate these companies as partners of the business being reviewed.
- Opinions, advice or diagnoses from your lawyer or doctor pertaining to your experience with the business.
- References to well-known (i) facts, (ii) news stories, (iii) public opinions, or (iv) world events (“well-known” is defined as those things that would be known by most international travelers traveling to that destination.)
- Incidental mentions of another guest’s experience, either (i) reported directly to you by that guest, but which you did not witness yourself, or (ii) reported directly to staff which you witnessed.
It must relate directly to something you or your traveling party experienced.
For example, we would not post a review that states, "Another guest at the bar told me that the owner doesn’t pay her employees on-time."
We would post a review that states, "Another guest at the bar told me they also had the best pina colada at the swim-up bar."
The guests must have experienced the property at the same time as you.
Political, Ethical, Religious Views
Reviews are not the place to discuss political preferences, ethical differences, religion or your perspective on wider social issues. We understand travel experiences can be deeply personal and may incite perspectives around politics and religion - and we will post such commentary as long as it is directly relevant to the location or business you are reviewing and meets our other content posting guidelines. Any such commentary that evolves into a rant may be removed.
If the political, religious, ethical or social views of the owner or employees of the business listed on our site directly impact the experience you are reviewing, you may elaborate on this but not expand to include your personal, non-travel related perspective. We also will post comments and advice that relates to local customs which impact travel, as long as your personal travel experience with the business you are reviewing is detailed. For example, if a specific hotel is not LGBTQ friendly due to local laws or owner behavior, we encourage contributors to share this information with our traveler community.
Due to the increased risk of violence and terrorist activity targeting refugees seeking asylum in Great Britain, we will not be posting any reviews in that region which provide information that could lead to the whereabouts of asylum seekers. This includes reviews that may not specifically identify asylum seekers but which make their location easily determinable. Tripadvisor has been and will continue to be a supporter of refugees seeking a safe haven and condemns any acts of violence towards such communities.
Review Length and Ratings
It is important that your review offers travel guidance to those planning future trips! For that reason, if your review does not contain enough substantial information about the business you are reviewing, we may ask you to provide additional information about your experience.
We have a character limit for reviews we enforce as follows:
- Hotels - 200 characters
- Restaurants, Experiences, Airlines & Cruises - 100 characters
We have a minimum character count to ensure review content is detailed, helpful and explains the reasoning behind the rating that was given. Reviews that contain very little context in them will be removed.
Our bubble rating is from 1 to 5, with 1 being defined as “Terrible” and 5 being defined as “Excellent.” Depending on the type of property you are reviewing, we may ask you to rate specific aspects of your visit such as sleep quality for a hotel visit or food for a restaurant visit. These fields are not required. You should not rate an aspect of the business you did not experience.
Irrelevant to Your Experience
If your review contains excessive commentary on other reviews, business owners or Tripadvisor policies we will ask you to resubmit a review that primarily focuses on your experience with that property.
If you believe a review has been written by the owner or competitor of a listing on Tripadvisor, please use the reporting function on our site to let us know. Reviews that allege other posted reviews are fraudulent will not be posted as that information does not relate to your travel experience. If you are concerned a particular business is engaged in multiple incidents of fraud please email us at contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com. You can also contact us with any other fraud-related questions you may have.
Listed on our Site
We list all businesses relevant to travelers, however we don't accept reviews for businesses that are not listed. Your review will be removed if it is submitted on a property that does not correlate with a listed business on Tripadvisor. If you would like to submit a review for a business that is not listed, we ask that you submit a request for a new listing. You can see those requirements here
Additionally, if a property is providing a function outside of the primary service you would typically receive at that property, we will not post the review. It is not helpful to the majority of travelers because it is not a regular part of the experience at that property. A review related to special event parking at a restaurant would be an example of a removal in this scenario.
Recent Experience
To ensure reviews are fresh and current, all reviews must be submitted within one year of your experience.
You may write one review on any given business listed on Tripadvisor per experience or visit. This means one review per hotel stay, restaurant visit, tour taken, or car rental. If you would like to amend your original review you will need to remove that review and submit a new one. For flights, we will post one review per leg of your trip as we understand each experience can differ. If you prefer to write about your round trip experience in one review - we will post that too!
To ensure enough time between visits, additional reviews of new experiences will be accepted after three months for an accommodation, attraction or tour, and after one month for restaurants/eateries. An exception is for airline reviews, where there is no limit on how many reviews that can be submitted within a given time frame.
Unique Experience
We will not post a review that describes the same experience to two listings; we will post it to the most relevant listing. For example, if you post a review to a hotel and the restaurant within that hotel that has exactly the same text and is not specific to one listing more than the other, we will post the review to the hotel. If you want to write a review about each experience you may, just do so independently so as not to confuse travelers.
We will allow multiple travelers to write about the same experience. For example, if you and your partner each choose to write a review from your own individual perspectives, we will post both reviews. We also allow reviews from multiple members of a large traveling party. Please just make sure the content is written in your own words and from your own perspective.
Contributors may only have one account on Tripadvisor, except in exceptional circumstances determined at Tripadvisor’s sole discretion. If you submit a review to the same listing from multiple accounts, we may remove duplicate submissions.
Tripadvisor does not allow content on our site that is biased or submitted in an attempt to manipulate rankings or ratings on our site. Violations of these guidelines may result in penalties to your Tripadvisor listing page, including ranking penalties, red badges, and/or exclusion from awards.
Furthermore, not abiding by these guidelines may violate local, national and/or international laws and can lead to legal action - including civil and criminal penalties.
Biased Content
Tripadvisor strives to ensure that all reviews are submitted from an authentic traveler’s perspective. This means any person affiliated with a property listed on our site, in any way, may not write a review of that property.
Specifically we will not accept reviews from users who:
- Are currently employed or have been employed at a property at any point in time. This includes reviews from people who have volunteered at or for a business listed on our site.
- Are related to or are friends with a current employee or owner.
- Receive any goods or services or provide goods or services to a property. For example, if you are the food purveyor for a property, you may not submit a review to that property. If you provide entertainment at a property, you may not submit a review.
- Own or are employed at a property of the same business category and are located within the same municipality of such property. To be clear, if you own or are employed by a coffee shop in Dublin, Ireland you may not submit reviews for other eateries in Dublin such as an Italian restaurant. This also applies to similar properties that may not be in your city’s geographic borders but are within 10 miles/16 kilometers of the location of where your business address is listed on Tripadvisor. While we understand that you certainly may have experienced that business as a general traveler, this policy is in place to help to ensure property rankings remain unbiased.
- Own a share of a property, such as a timeshare, even if within a larger group of properties and ownership is with a variety of properties.
Exceptions to people associated with a property include:
- Eco-Volunteers: travelers who pay to volunteer or work at a property and still use the general facilities of a property as a traveler may write a review.
Attempts to Manipulate Property Ranking by Businesses
Tripadvisor is staunchly opposed to any and all attempts at artificially manipulating a property’s ranking on our site. These include, but are not limited to, the following actions:
- Reviews submitted by property representatives. We reserve the right to remove content and/or penalize properties should we receive content submissions from anyone who owns, is employed by, or is affiliated with the reviewed property, or any umbrella or parent companies with which that property may be affiliated, in any way. This includes (but is not limited to) content from users who are upfront about their affiliation in addition to users who are impersonating travelers, competitors, or any other individuals or entities. It is also prohibited for representatives of a business to submit reviews on behalf of guests, regardless of whether the opinion is genuine or not.
- Paid Reviews/Review Exchanges. Tripadvisor is staunchly opposed to the selling, purchasing, or quid-pro-quo exchange of reviews. Any reviews submitted in this manner are considered inherently fraudulent and will be met with penalties for not only the property or properties involved, but the reviewers as well. If you have been contacted by anyone offering these services, or you know of anyone involved in this behavior, please let our team know at contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com
- Incentives for Reviews. It is against our guidelines to offer or promise anything in exchange for any reviews, irrespective of rating. Examples include offers for free drinks, discounts, entry into a contest, making donations to a cause in the name of a customer, etc.
- Incentives for Review Removals. Attempts by an individual representing a property to offer anything in exchange for the removal of a published review are against our guidelines and will be met with penalties.
- Pressuring Users to Remove Reviews. Attempts by anyone affiliated with a property to pressure, threaten, or otherwise coerce a user into removing their review for that property are a violation of our guidelines and will be met with penalties.
- Coercing Users to Submit Reviews. Any form of coercion by individuals associated with a property to compel users into submitting reviews is strictly forbidden. Such practices include, but are not limited to: (a) using threats, whether explicit or tacit, to pressure a user into submitting a review, (b) withholding any element of service until a user submits a review.
- Taking Action on Behalf of Users. Individuals affiliated with properties listed on our site should not be directly involved in the submission of reviews. Such practices include, but are not limited to: (a) creating user accounts on behalf of users, (b) writing reviews on behalf of users, (c) monitoring users while they write reviews, (d) suggesting specific terms, wording, or paraphrasing to be included in reviews.
- Employee Incentives. It is a violation of our guidelines for a property to offer incentives designed to reward employees for encouraging reviews, e.g., a bonus for being mentioned in a review, or a contest for the highest number of reviews achieved within a certain timeframe. Such programs are against our guidelines and may be met with penalties to a property’s ranking. If you are aware of such programs at any property, please let our team know by emailing contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com
- Review Gating. We prohibit the practice of selectively soliciting positive content and/or rejecting moderate or negative content. If any survey or external website ultimately directs users to submit a review on Tripadvisor, the user interface and experience for submitting positive and negative reviews must be identical. For example, directing a guest to one review page if they indicate a positive experience but directing them to another path (such as an internal customer support channel) if they indicate a negative experience is against our review guidelines.
- Restrictions. We do not allow properties to contractually prohibit or discourage guests from posting negative or critical reviews of their experience. Any properties found to be engaging in these practices will have a warning badge posted on their business listing page on Tripadvisor until that policy has been discontinued.
- Vandalism. Any attempts, made by individuals affiliated with one property, to damage the reputation of a competing property are considered to be violations of our guidelines. This includes (but is not limited to) submitting negative reviews, attempting to falsely register as an owner of the competing listing, or similar behaviors.
User Attempts to Manipulate a Property’s Ranking
Any users who attempt to manipulate a property’s ranking, even if not affiliated with that property, may be banned from our site due to such actions. The actions may be, but are not limited to:
- Blackmail. Tripadvisor classifies any attempt made in bad faith by a traveler to obtain something of value from a property by threatening to post a negative review on Tripadvisor, or promising to remove a published negative review, as blackmail. It is not considered blackmail if a guest mentions they plan to write a review due to a negative experience but is not making a bad faith demand. Examples would include a guest trying to rectify a situation with a broken pipe in a room or an incorrect order at a restaurant.
- Review Bombing Events. Reviews must describe a first-hand experience; users who are submitting reviews to a property due to a personal or political agenda, or reviews submitted solely due to news or social media exposure of a property which do not describe first-hand experiences will not be published. If a significant amount of such content is detected on a listing, we reserve the right to temporarily suspend publishing all content for that listing.
- Impersonation of Tripadvisor Employees. Tripadvisor does not employ anyone to physically visit and rate properties (also known as “secret shoppers” or “mystery shoppers”). Property owners should not trust anyone representing themselves as such and should alert us to this behavior immediately by contacting contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com.
There are some scenarios where we do not allow a review to be posted even if there might have been some contact with the property. You are invited to share such comments in the Forums section of our site where members of our community discuss travel-related topics.
Some examples of this may include:
- Comments solely on a property’s policy. While it may be helpful for a traveler to know that a restaurant reserves its bathrooms for patrons only or that a hotel does not allow dogs or that you can not receive a refund for your cancellation, it is unfair to a business to be rated negatively based solely on these types of policies that occur regularly in the travel industry. We will remove reviews that simply describe an interaction that is a disagreement on the stated policies. If you describe a more substantial customer service interaction with the business, beyond the stated policies, we will post the interaction because we believe that customer service experience may be helpful to travelers.
- Commenting on a property due to media coverage. If you wish to comment on a recent event at that property which attracted media attention but at which you were not present, we will not post your review.
- Comments solely on business hours or closures. While we recognize that it could be frustrating to arrive at a restaurant only to find out that it is closed, we will not post reviews commenting solely on business hours or closures unless the official information posted by the business created an expectation of service.
- Unsuccessful attempts to contact a business. We do not consider unanswered calls or emails to be a valid description of the service provided by the business.
- Experiencing a property from the "outside." If you visit a property with only the intent to view its architecture or decor, we will only post a review if a main component of the property is that visual element alone. For example, when reviewing a cathedral we understand that part of the traveler experience at that business is to view the exterior of the building and is acceptable in a review. We would not post a review of a hotel from someone who was not a guest of that hotel and is only speaking to the hotel’s architecture.
- Long term stays. We do accept reviews from users who have a prolonged stay at a given property provided the information in the review is relevant to other (more traditional) travelers. We will not post your review if it is written exclusively from a tenant or renter’s perspective.
We love hearing about your travel experiences and value your contributions to our site! We also want to make sure that Vacation Rentals is a safe and trustworthy source for our global community. To help us with this goal, and to get your reviews published as quickly as possible, please ensure your reviews are:
Recent
To keep content fresh for our readers, we ask that you stick to writing about experiences that occurred within the current calendar year or up to two calendar years prior.
Based on short-term stays
We welcome you to share your thoughts on any stay that is 90 days or less.
Relevant to travelers
Keep in mind that our reviews are intended to help travelers with their vacation plans – as such, we kindly ask that you stick to writing about vacation rentals only. That means no reviews on corporate, interim, transitional or temporary housing.
Written after check-in
We kindly ask that you write about your experiences after you check in to your vacation rental. To help ensure authenticity in our reviews, we currently don’t accept submissions that occur during the reservation process or before arrival at the property.
Verifiable by the name on the rental contract
To help ensure authenticity in our reviews, you will be asked to enter the name of the person in your party who signed the lease agreement. (This required field appears at the top of the Write a Review form). NOTE: We do not share this name publicly on our site.
Can be documented by rental owner
If a vacation rental owner cannot confirm that a reviewer was a guest, we send the guest a request for documentation. This is simply to ensure that the correct owner and property is credited for your review.