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Online Haunt Reviews

October 26, 2013 - Entertainment

Take a look at ‘haunted houses’ on Yelp, and you’ll find that many of the reviews are two and three stars for even the best haunts. You’ll also see a similar trend on other business rating websites. So, why is it that online ratings don’t accurately reflect the fact that most customers love these haunts so much?
First is the principle that every statistics/science class teaches you: correlation is not causation! Just because reviews are mediocre doesn’t mean the show is. There are lots of reasons why online reviews could be inaccurate. For example, I would personally be much more inclined to go home and tell my friends about the AMAZING experience I just had at a haunted house than go review it online. And if I had an absolutely horrible time, I’d be more likely to go home and sulk on my computer. Every haunted house has bad nights just as any theatre company puts on a bad show from time to time. These disappointed customers are much more likely to write negative reviews than a person who enjoyed the show.
In addition to this unfortunate source of error, there is a whole lot of sabotage on review websites. Yelp is currently the holy grail of reliable business review sites, but you’d be surprised how biased it actually is. Also, since the haunt industry is so small, competition can get gritty especially on these sites. There are plenty of phony reviews flying around, but it’s oftentimes hard to tell which ones are fake, not that you can do anything about them. Since there’s not a whole lot anybody can do about this situation, I’d just urge customers to take these reviews with a grain of salt.