Tripadvisor AI summaries downplay serious hotel complaints
Tripadvisor's AI-generated summaries of hotel reviews reportedly downplay serious guest complaints about food poisoning, sexual harassment, and poor hygiene, according to an investigation by Which?. The AI tool described hotels being sued for food safety failures as "spotless" and characterized sexual harassment complaints as minor lapses in service.
What happened
Tripadvisor's AI tool generates summaries of hotel reviews to help users decide where to book. According to an investigation by Which?, the AI summaries downplayed serious complaints across multiple hotels.
At Riu Palace Santa Maria in Cape Verde, the AI described the hotel as popular with spacious rooms, diverse restaurants earning 'rave reviews', and 'spotless' cleanliness. Yet guests reported being served raw chicken, shared photographs of flies and birds on the buffet, and spotted 'dead little roasted mice by the sitting area'. The hotel chain is being sued in high court by hundreds of guests alleging illnesses linked to poor hygiene standards and food safety failings.
A hotel in the Dominican Republic was praised by the AI for 'abundant' amenities with only vague reference to 'inconsistent' cleanliness and 'maintenance issues', while guests reported lack of mains water and members of a large wedding party becoming ill. A Turkish hotel where guests reported feeling unsafe due to repeated sexual harassment from male staff was described by the AI as having 'friendly' service with only 'lapses [in service] noted by a few'.
Reported impact
The AI-generated summaries could mislead holidaymakers deciding where to book by glossing over serious health and safety concerns. Which? found 102 mentions of food poisoning at Riu Palace Santa Maria in March, with 32 one or two-star reviews posted between December 2025 and April 2026, and at least 14 reporting serious illness from food poisoning.
Index analysis
The AI tool failed to appropriately weight or incorporate multiple consistent reports of specific harms—food poisoning, hygiene failures, lack of utilities, and sexual harassment—from recent guest reviews. Instead, it generated positive characterizations that contradicted the documented complaints.
Governance controls
Tripadvisor said it was monitoring and refining its AI tool and was 'confident these features are delivering exactly what they were designed to do'. Which? editor Rory Boland advised users to 'scroll past these summaries and look at guest reviews'.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.