Can your travel personality help avoid the pitfalls of Crowdturfing?
What is the heck is Crowdturfing? It describes what’s been going on in the travel industry for decades, but now it’s fueled by AI. Here’s what happens. Companies recruit a large number of people to support a campaign. It could be as simple as writing positive reviews on TripAdvisor or writing negative reviews.
Who do you believe? Yeah, it’s fake news! I wrote about fake five-star reviews a while back. Read more here.
How Does Crowdtufing Work?
An excerpt from BBC News, “When buying a product or making a booking, most of us turn to online reviews written by other customers to help us make a decision. But some unscrupulous firms pay people to write positive reviews to tip the scales in their favour. Others seek to tarnish the reputation of competitors by paying for scores of negative comments.
The cost of hiring people has largely limited the spread of fake reviews. But researchers warn artificial intelligence will change that. Scientists at the University of Chicago have shown it is possible to train an AI neural network to generate and post convincing reviews on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Automated Crowdturfing algorithms could produce so many fake reviews it would quickly become impossible to know what to trust, warns computer scientist Ben Zhao, one of the researchers behind the study.”
Can Your Travel Personality Help Avoid the Pitfalls of Crowdturfing?
I can’t be more excited that Crowdturfing is getting exposure. Travelers have been misguided for years by Crowdturfing, and when AI gets involved, it will be so much harder for consumers to decipher which review is genuine and which is fake. AI will further push fake news. It supports algorithms using human tones and inflections when writing reviews. This will make it hard for travelers to separate AI reviews from people-posted reviews. Think about it, robots can post 24/7 which, until now, hiring that many people wasn’t cost effective.
Gird Your Loins!
What if you could use your travel personality as your inner travel guide to assist you in making the perfect travel decision? Who better to trust than yourself? There is no hocus pocus going on, I promise.
Your inner travel guide is made up of your distinct travel personality characteristics that make you, you! I developed these travel personality traits based on Myers Briggs® Type Indicators. Carl Gustav Jung was the initiator of personality types and renowned for rational psychology. His studies were further expanded by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers who gave types a practical psychological approach, making Myers-Briggs® typing a household name.
How to Wean Yourself Off Reviews
Would you be shocked if I told you that you don’t have to rely on travel reviews as much as you think you do? Of course, if a trusted friend or family member or a bonafide travel expert can lend their expertise, listen. You can then make a solid decision based on your specific travel personality. Answering questions like:
- What is the best beach for my type?
- Would you prefer a sprawling resort or a hip hotel stay?
- Will you find me poolside reading a book or at a festival?
- Do you like to chit-chat with strangers or are you more introspective when on vacation?
As far as online reviews go, you can skip 80% of them once you’ve identified your type because you will have a deep understanding of your inherent likes, dislikes, wants, and desires. Does that sound fabulous? Do you think it would make vacation planning easier? The answer is yes to both questions!
What is a Travel Personality?
Innate natural tendencies influence the way you travel and define your travel personality. For instance, do you enjoy browsing silently through a museum marveling at works of art? Does it leave you fulfilled and happier? While attending a music festival do you become totally invigorated by the sights, sounds, and crowds or do you want to crawl in a hole? Are you feeling fabulous that you organized a wonderful family vacation down to the smallest details or would you rather wing it? These simple unobserved acts are woven into the fabric of one’s travel personality. We will explore specific types in full detail in future posts. For now, you can browse a few previous blogs to start your journey within.
To reiterate; travel personality typing unveils one’s unique soul stirrings. You learn what you love and what you don’t. It helps you understand what lights you up deep inside yourself when you travel. This knowing means you can learn more about yourself and also discover the travel personality traits of your better half, children, parents, friends, and business associates. You can trust yourself to make the right decision for you and your band of merry travel mates! Just know everyone has a travel personality.
A Few Quick Questions?
To better serve this community of travel seekers, I want to know where you are online — Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr? Let me know where you like to hang out as I want to create a community of like-minded travel seekers who want to journey within before they begin exploring the world.
I also want to foster a tribe of real-world travelers to comment and share their experiences based on their travel personality to enlighten other travelers so they don’t make the same mistakes or so they can experience an exhilarating holiday based on thoughtful, genuine reviews. No AI here!
Would be honored for you to be a part of this community, which I hope will take hold in countries around the world. Would you like to join? You know what you have to do; yep, go to the subscribe button and enter your email address. I will not spam or become an obnoxious emailer. Promise! Thank you in advance for your support — and know soul-filled travel is in your future
Stay Tuned — There’s More
I’m working on a quiz and developing each of the 16 unique personality types. I want to make each personality profile oh-so-delicious and useful. We invest so much in vacations, so why not make each trip amazing, transformational, and less stressful? Watch this space; they’re coming soon!
My radio interview is live for What’s Your Travel Personality?, aired on Speaking of Travel, radio, iHeart with host Marilyn Ball is now live. Give it a listen.
