Travel News

There is a press release knocking about today which is worth a mention, really as part of a wider debate about online reviews of travel products.

Consumer opinion site Reviewcentre.com has named Jet2.com as “Best Airline”, according to users of its travel product section.

The site aggregates reviews to give an overall score and also asks consumers to rate areas of a business such as value-for-money, customer service and punctuality.

So we decided to take a look. Jet2.com’s new honour has been bestowed on it from just 21 reviews on the site, handing it a worthy overall rating of 90%.

But look at Thomas Cook, which had a similar number of reviews (23), but managed a far less impressive overall score with 52%.

The same goes for ThomsonFly (25 reviews and a palattempt 28%).

The point here is that when – if there is one – is the so-called Tipping Point for online reviews.

• What constitutes a robust and accurate indicator of a product’s performance in terms of the number of reviews?
• Do consumers have an in-built mechanism whereby they start to believe an overall rating of a travel product but only after, say, 50 people have a reviewed it?
• Would people believe Jet2.com is a better airline than BA (50% in this case) because it has a higher rating despite only having 20-odd people review it?

Here is the list of “Top Airlines” on ReviewCentre.com, with the number of reviews and overall rating:

American Airlines – 36 reviews – 25%
British Airways – 84 reviews – 50%
BMI – 19 reviews – 68%
Britannia Airways – 11 reviews – 55%
British Midland – 5 reviews – 40%
Continental – 15 reviews – 67%
EasyJet – 64 reviews – 55%
Emirates – 37 reviews – 35%
Iberia Airlines – 57 reviews – 19%
Jet2.com – 21 reviews – 90%
KLM – 30 reviews – 40%
Monarch – 51 reviews – 39%
MyTravel – 63 reviews – 43%
Ryanair – 63 reviews – 48%
Singapore Airlines – 11 reviews – 55%
Thomas Cook – 23 reviews – 52%
ThomsonFly – 25 reviews – 28%
United Airlines – 47 reviews – 32%
US Airways – 17 reviews – 18%
Virgin Atlantic Airways – 77 reviews – 56%

Eagle-eyed readers will recollect BMI and British Midland are, if fact, one and the same, as well as Britannia Airways and ThomsonFly.com…

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Original post by Travolution Blogger