HOTFRED: A Flexible Hotel Fake Review Detection System

Abstract The importance to cope with online fake reviews in Tourism becomes more and more evident. In the hotel sector hoteliers as well as guests often struggle with the challenges to separate true and fake reviews from each other. Therefore, our research introduces HOTFRED - a flexible hotel fake review detection system - as part of an on-going research project. By combining different analytical approaches, the HOTFRED system indicates via an aggregated probability whether a review is true or fake. As the evaluation of the prototypical implementation showed, this approach can support to detect fake reviews. Many different stakeholders in the Tourism sector can profit from this automatic tool. Thus, hoteliers can take measures to safe their reputation, guests can benefit in their decision-making process and research might use the tool as an initial starting point for future research in the area of fake information.