Tripadvisor's 2025 Transparency Report reveals strong review submissions and improved fraud detection
NEEDHAM, Mass., March 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Tripadvisor®, the world's largest travel guidance platform, today released the fourth edition of its Transparency Report, exploring the company's ongoing efforts to ensure its platform remains a trusted source for global travel guidance.
The report, released every two years, analyzes the prior year's global community contributions, offering a deep dive into global submissions and highlighting shifting review trends.
Becky Foley, Head of Trust & Safety at Tripadvisor, said: "As the world's largest travel guidance platform, no one has a greater commitment to ensuring that the content on our site is reliable and trustworthy. While many companies are scaling back their Trust and Safety efforts, Tripadvisor remains steadfast in prioritizing trust. These actions reaffirm our unwavering commitment to consumer protection and our leadership in the travel industry through integrity and innovation. As Tripadvisor celebrates its 25th anniversary, the company is proud to have spent those years dedicated to fostering a trusted resource for travelers and businesses."
Tripadvisor's 2025 Transparency Report's key insights include:
1. Strong growth for content submissions
Travelers shared nearly 80 million contributions in 2024 via the Tripadvisor website and app, a 9% increase from the last report. This included 31.1 million reviews and 38.1 million photos and videos. Notably, the platform experienced a significant surge in reviews for experiences, attractions and activities - up 45% from the last report - as this category continues to grow in popularity with Tripadvisor members.
Community engagement also remained extremely high in 2024. Tripadvisor business owners responded to over 11 million reviews, while members responded to 257,000 questions from fellow travelers. Tripadvisor's forums remain a popular place to learn about destinations and discuss travel, with almost 2.6 million posts published last year.
2. A Multi-Layered Approach to Content Moderation
Reviews submitted to Tripadvisor can be subject to three review moderation processes, including automation, human oversight, and community input to ensure content integrity and fairness. Around 9 out of 10 reviews (87.8%) met our automation standards for posting in 2024, with 7.3% rejected through technological analysis and 4.9% flagged for further review by moderators. Our Trust and Safety team moderated 4.2 million (13.5% of all reviews) either before or after posting.
3. Fighting Fake Reviews
Tripadvisor continues to tackle fraudulent activity, including fake reviews that are designed to manipulate business listings' ratings and rankings. Through a combination of advanced technology, human analysis, and community engagement, Tripadvisor successfully safeguarded travelers from 2.7 million fraudulent reviews in 2024.
'Review boosting,' where business owners, employees, or anyone affiliated with a business posts positive reviews to boost their own rankings, accounted for the majority of fake review submissions (54% of total fraud in 2024).
Around 9,000 businesses received warnings for engaging in incentivized reviews, which is where businesses 'bribe' customers or 'reward' employees for positive reviews. In fact, 360,000 removed reviews were linked to employee incentive programs, where businesses offer rewards to their own staff in exchange for positive reviews.
With fraudulent review schemes evolving, Tripadvisor has strengthened its fraud detection models and reinforced policies that lead to penalizing businesses on our platform, continuing to stay one step ahead of the bad actors.
4. The Impact of Generative AI
Generative AI is having a noticeable impact on submissions posted to the platform and 214,000 AI-generated reviews were flagged and removed in 2024 to prevent misleading content.
"Our approach to AI-generated content is rooted in maintaining traveler trust in opinions shared on our platform," added Foley. "While AI has many benefits, removing reviews identified as being written by AI helps our users avoid a 'sea of sameness' on Tripadvisor, allowing them to discover truly unique insights from fellow travelers."
5. Increased Industry Collaboration
As a way to continue to collaborate and lead in the review space, Tripadvisor has joined forces with other major online platforms to establish the Coalition for Trusted Reviews. This global initiative, founded alongside Amazon, Expedia Group, Glassdoor, Booking.com and Trustpilot, focuses on industry-wide standards to define and prevent fake reviews; best practice sharing for content moderation; collaborative fraud detection efforts and policy advocacy to support stronger consumer protections.
To read the full report, visit: www.tripadvisor.com/TransparencyReport2025
About Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor, the world's largest travel guidance platform*, helps millions of people each month** become better travelers, from planning to booking to taking a trip. Travelers across the globe use Tripadvisor's website and app to discover where to stay, what to do and where to eat based on guidance from those who have been there before. With more than a billion reviews and contributions, travelers turn to Tripadvisor to find deals on accommodations, book experiences, reserve tables at delicious restaurants and discover great places nearby.
Tripadvisor LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP). The subsidiaries of Tripadvisor, Inc. own and operate a portfolio of travel media brands and businesses, operating under various websites and apps.
* Source: SimilarWeb, unique users de-duplicated monthly, March 2025
** Source: Tripadvisor internal log fileslease
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tripadvisors-2025-transparency-report-reveals-strong-review-submissions-and-improved-fraud-detection-302403631.html
SOURCE Tripadvisor