hotel
London's Cromwell Crown Hotel has promised to clean up its act Reuters

One of the worst-ranked hotels in London and Europe has defended TripAdvisor after the travel website was forced to withdraw its "Reviews you can trust" strapline.

ReservationS manager Lara Cacreto for the Cromwell Crown Hotel, which is ranked 963<sup>rd out of 993 in London, said: "TripAdvisor is an excellent resource for the client and it's important they know what's going on."

Her surprising comments came after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) criticised TripAdvisor for misleading consumers over its claim that all reviews were from real travellers who had physically visited the hotel or restaurant reviewed on the site.

Cacreto said some reviews on the site had hit business but that the hotel was going to move on.

"A certain number of our cancellations have been because of the reviews from the website," she said. "It is very damaging for our business."

The ASA upheld complaints against the site and said that consumers would take its claims of trustworthy reviews to mean they were from genuine travellers and accurately reflected those travellers' experiences of the places they visited.

The ASA said that as reviews could be placed on the site without verification it was possible that false reviews could go undetected.

TripAdvisor said it used "advanced and highly effective" fraud detection systems and dedicated substantial resources to identifying and minimising false content.

One review of the Cromwell, written in autumn last year, warned readers: "Do not stay here... A jail room is probably better."

Cacreto, who has worked at the hotel for two years, told International Business Times UK, that in this instance, the reviews were correct.

"We are undergoing a lot of on the hotel at the moment and there is a lot of noise," she said. "We hope to be completely ready for the Olympics by which point we will change our name."

London