Love to leave online reviews? Here's what they reveal about you

You've barely checked out of the hotel when you are prompted to review your stay. "Tell us about your experience at 'Casa del Clickbait'. Please rate us highly or giant snakes will eat our children. Thank you!"

We are asked to review our flights, meals and bungee jumps. Look, if I survived these, they were fine. My critical criterion for any plane is that it has the same number of landings as take-offs. Very few reviews are available for flights that did not achieve this KPI. Ditto for unsuccessful bungee or parachute jumps.

Reviews are a huge part of the travel experience these days. Providers want 'em. Customers want to share. And sometimes they bring a little magic to our feeds:

"I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant in Mumbai served curry."

"The staff at the Eiffel Tower tried to speak to me in French ... but I don't speak French BECAUSE I'M A TOURIST!"

"Didn't see the Northern Lights due to clouds. Would not recommend Norway."

"I went to Abbey Road but there were no zebras crossing."

And before you ask, only three of these were Americans.

The internet has made everyone a reviewer, which is unreal, literally. Tripadvisor admitted that about 8 per cent of the 31 million reviews submitted in 2024 were fake. Other estimates put the fake rate at between 20 and 40 per cent, and rising.

I'm shocked! Shocked to find that fakery is going on in social media! But the bigger issue for me is that where we once had trusted experts with qualifications and experience to review a restaurant or hotel, we now have Macca from Marrickville sharing his encounter with a bland sole meuniere at L'Oiseau Blanc in Paris and Karen from Canberra complaining about the lack of swans in the lake at Dumbleton Hall Hotel in the English Cotswolds.

Now, Macca and Kaz might know their stuff. Macca could be a poissonnier and Kaz a cygnologist, but I'm betting they are more likely mug punters who like a whinge.

Social media's bony, rapacious fingers are reaching deeper and deeper into our lives. Suddenly everyone's opinion matters. Or more importantly, counts, for it is the metrics that matter most.

Reviews, likes, stars, ticks and recommendations make the tourism world go round, and in the spirit of The Simpsons' sensationalist news anchor Kent Brockman, I, for one, welcome our new algorithm overlords.

Algorithms distil countless reviews into advice that makes things better, right? Without reviews and star ratings, how can we hope to solve important first-world problems?

If you're the sort of person who lies awake at night wondering if your recorded call was actually ever used for quality training purposes, you probably compose a detailed analysis of your experience, or what is now known as "lived experience", an important distinction from deceased experience.

Maybe you're a boomer who's forgotten about inflation and complains about the price of sashimi in Sapporo or the cod in Cape Town. Perhaps you're overly positive ("Most amazing experience of my life. Would sell my children to return") or excessively negative ("Everything sucked and then, when it was over, sucked some more. Zero stars!")

Whatever your reviewing style, just be aware that when you share and click "submit", the algorithms are watching. Macca may not know it, but when he reviewed the fish, he also ordered a phish.