Tripadvisor's new artificial intelligence-powered review summaries are downplaying serious safety concerns at hotels, including food poisoning outbreaks, hygiene failures, and sexual harassment, according to an investigation by consumer watchdog Which?.
AI Summaries Present Glowing Overviews Despite Numerous Complaints
When browsing Tripadvisor, holidaymakers now see an AI-generated summary at the top of each hotel page. These summaries are intended to provide quick, digestible information, but in some cases, they paint a starkly different picture from the guest reviews below.
For example, the AI summary for the five-star, all-inclusive Riu Palace Santa Maria in Cape Verde describes it as 'popular with many travellers', with 'spacious rooms', 'diverse restaurants' earning 'rave reviews', and cleanliness summarised as 'spotless'. However, guest reviews on the same platform report 'exceptionally poor hygiene', 'no basic cleaning or hygiene standards', and food that was 'awful, bland, unsafe and inedible'. One guest said she was served raw chicken; another shared photographs of flies and birds in the buffet food; and one reported 'dead little roasted mice by the sitting area' during a 'nightmare' holiday. A guest whose family fell ill wrote: 'This place will destroy holidays, and [has the] potential to take lives.'
Food Poisoning and Deaths at Riu Palace
When Which? checked in March 2026, there were 102 mentions of food poisoning at the Riu Palace. The resort had 32 one- and two-star reviews posted between December 2025 and April 2026, 14 of which said at least one member of the party fell seriously ill with food poisoning. Many were hospitalised, some flew home early, and one guest died this year. The hotel is now involved in a group legal action representing at least 412 holidaymakers who say they became ill after staying at the property, with seven deaths reported since 2023.
Negative reviews are not concealed and can be read in the review section, but experts warn that most users are unlikely to click through to find them. Martyn Slack, who runs family travel YouTube channel Three Tickets Anywhere, said the problem is that most people 'don't take that extra step' to check reviews directly on the hotel's site. He added: 'For budget-conscious parents especially, an inaccurate overview isn't just annoying, it can mean an unrefundable non-cancellable booking that turns out wrong for their kid.'
AI Chatbot Ollie Also Fails to Warn
Tripadvisor's interactive trip planning bot, Ollie, also failed to warn about poor hygiene. When asked directly about the risk of contracting food poisoning at the Riu Palace, Ollie said food poisoning was 'quite unlikely' and that the resort had a 'strong reputation for high hygiene standards'.
Tripadvisor told Which? that it prioritises 'transparency and impartiality' and that its summaries 'surface a range of both positive and negative community feedback associated with listings'. It also said that Ollie 'draws from a selection of reviews based on detail and recency, and matches by language and context', but noted that it is a 'product in development' and is actively looking into examples where reviews did not match.
Other Hotels with Discrepancies
The Riu Palace was not the only hotel where serious reports were missing from the AI summary. At Garza Blanca resort in Cancun, several guests who stayed in the past 12 months left reviews saying they fell ill, including a wedding party. Yet Tripadvisor's AI overview describes 'immaculate cleanliness' and says dining options 'earn [it] positive feedback'.
At the Occidental Caribe in the Dominican Republic, recent reviewers called it a 'disaster and disturbing' as recently as March 2026, with one saying her room smelled of sewage and half of a 68-person wedding party fell ill. Another reported the whole hotel smelled of mould, and several mentioned a lack of running water. In contrast, the AI summary talks about 'abundant' amenities, with only a vague nod to 'inconsistent' cleanliness and 'maintenance issues'.
At Kaia Coracesium on the Antalya coast in Turkey, several reviewers wrote that they felt unsafe due to repeated sexual harassment from male hotel staff, including inappropriate jokes, gestures, and requests to connect on social media. Two guests reported that a male staff member followed their daughters to request social media details; one said a restaurant worker followed her up the stairs to her room. The AI summary describes the service as 'friendly', with the closest reference being 'Lapses [in service] noted by a few'.
Comparison with Google's AI Summaries
Which? compared Tripadvisor's approach with Google's AI summaries for hotels. Google's overview for the Riu Palace warned of 'potential for illness' and flagged 'outbreaks of illness' and 'concerns over birds in the buffet areas'. For the Britannia International hotel in London, Google accurately shared that the hotel was 'frequently rated as one of the worst hotel chains in the UK' and highlighted reviews of 'filthy' conditions and 'horrendous' service. Tripadvisor's summary of the same hotel said guests 'often praise the clean rooms' and described the atmosphere as 'charming'.
Expert Criticism
Oli Huggins, CEO of ExpertEdge and VP of Partnerships at Packt Publishing, said generative AI summaries fail 'in three predictable ways'. First, systems are trained to be agreeable, leaning positive by default. Second, they rely on clichés like 'charming' and 'convenient location'. Third, they hallucinate: when the model does not know something, it fills the gap with a plausible invention. Nupur Khurana, a former AI consultant with QXP India Travel, agreed: 'The danger isn't that [AI summaries] are wrong, outright, it's that they present with total confidence regardless of accuracy.'
Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel, said: 'Tripadvisor may insist users can still fact-check its summaries against real reviews, but this ignores the fact that it made the decision to push these summaries to the very top of the page. This failure to surface critical safety information is unacceptable and potentially life-threatening.' He added: 'The platform has a responsibility to revisit the accuracy of its AI summaries and AI chatbot. In the meantime, users should scroll past these summaries and look at guest reviews, particularly one-star ratings, and at reviews on other sites, to make sure their next stay is a safe one.'
