The Independent today reports that TripAdvisor's "Dirtiest Hotels' list for the UK is causing an uproar among hospitality leaders.  The industry across the ocean worries that TripAdvisor and similar sites - sites that rely on anonymous reviews - yield too much power, the story says. The concern had existed before, but TripAdvisor's Dirtiest Hotels list made it an even hotter topic in the past week, the article says.  TripAdvisor's "Dirtiest Hotels" list for the USA was such as a talker on Hotel Check-In last week that the post attracted a whopping 276 comments.  Bob Cotton, CEO of the British Hospitality Association, told the Independent that hotels across Europe are lobbying the EU Commission to rewrite the rules governing website reviews. The goal? Make sure they're legitimate - and not written by rivals.  "Websites have a responsibility that the person has actually stayed at the hotel or dined at the restaurant," Cotton told the Independent. "I have been having discussions in Brussels on behalf of the industry so that some sort of common sense should prevail, as it does on sites such as eBay.  "You can't ban these on-line comments – that is like de-inventing the atomic bomb – and I am in favour of all these methods of modern communication. But we need a fair crack of the whip," said Cotton. He said he's aware of some cases in which a hotel owner had been double-crossed by a competitor who wrote a series of disparaging comments about the rival hotel.  The owner of the two-star, seaside Grosvenor Hotel - named by TripAdvisor as Britain's No. 1 "dirtiest hotel" - criticized TripAdvisor's methodology. Hotel owner Chirag Khajuria told the Independent that out of the 3,000 guests he'd had in the six months since he'd taken over the hotel, the hotel had 35 poor reviews "and some of our guests have said they would be back again to stay," according to the article.  When the Daily Mail wrote up the hotel's ranking on the list, it said that the rooms there were "no worse – and, in some cases, better – than many other hotels in Britain," according to the Independent's article.  In a statement, TripAdvisor said that it uses "automated tools" and a team of moderators to detect fraud.  To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor  . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to  . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to
TripAdvisor's 'Dirtiest Hotels' list angers UK's hospitality industry - Hotel Check-in: A road warrior's guide to the lodging landscape - USATODAY.com