How to Remove a Negative Review From Tripadvisor

As a multi-location marketer, managing your business's online reputation is a must. Eighty-eight percent of consumers now trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

When to Consider Removing a Negative Review

Before we get into removing a negative review from Tripadvisor, let's dive into what to consider before deleting a negative review. Negative reviews happen. They often show potential consumers that your business is real and provide an opportunity to win a customer back. Still, sometimes, there are reasons for a negative review to be removed. According to Tripadvisor, six types of reviews can be removed and include:

Bias and attempts to manipulate Tripadvisor rankings: If your business receives a negative review that is biased or submitted by competitors or someone who may have an ulterior motive, those reviews are eligible to be removed.
Irrelevant trip experiences: Tripadvisor has a minimum character count for reviews to ensure that they provide helpful information. On the other hand, if the review contains irrelevant information to the location being reviewed, Tripadvisor may ask for a more concise review. Tripadvisor also notes that any reviews containing political, religious, or ethical views that turn into a "rant" will be removed.
Ineligible experiences: There are some scenarios where Tripadvisor won't let a review be posted and will consider it an ineligible experience. These include reviews solely focused on attempts to contact a business, experiencing a property from the "outside," commenting on a property's policies, and more that you can find detailed here.
Second-hand experiences: If a negative review comes from someone who did not experience the listing firsthand, that is grounds for removal.
Second-hand information: Similarly, Tripadvisor doesn't want reviews that include details from a third party or descriptions from the media or other guests.
Unique and recent experiences: If your business receives a negative review and the reviewer left the review more than a year after their experience, it is eligible to be removed. Similarly, Tripadvisor will not accept reviews that describe the same experience at two listings. If the review is copied from another listing, it violates Tripadvisors guidelines.

Any of the previously mentioned review types can and often should be taken down. Next, we'll look at how your business can get any qualifying reviews removed by Tripadvisor.

How to Remove a Negative Review From Tripadvisor

If your multi-location business sees a review that needs to be removed, the process is relatively simple. Your multi-location business must follow these three steps:

Go to the Business Management Center of your Tripadvisor profile.
Under the reviews section, select "Report a Review."
Fill out the form and explain why you think Tripadvisor should remove the review. Pro tip: It's helpful to include which of Tripadvisor's guidelines the review violates.

Once you have filled out the form, someone from Tripadvisor will review the request and determine whether or not the review violates any of their guidelines and should be taken down. If another user feels that a review violates Tripadvisors guidelines, they can flag the review themselves by clicking on the flag icon next to the review. Again, once the review is flagged, someone from Tripadvisor will review the request and decide. Tripadvisor processes over 10,000 reviews a day, which means it could take anywhere from a few hours to more than a week to process your request to have a review removed.