Community Mission

We are the TripAdvisor travel community, the largest of its kind in the world. As diverse a group as any on Earth, we’re united by our love for travel and a common mission to make our next trip the best trip ever – and to have fun planning it. It’s a challenging mission, but we help each other accomplish it every day on TripAdvisor.

We’re all hungry for the knowledge to create our own “best trip ever,” but it’s our willingness to share our own experiences upon returning home that assures countless others a shot at their own perfect trip. We make friends, share laughs, exchange tips, and find that talking about travel is almost as fun as traveling. Almost.

Whether planning our own trips or helping others plan theirs, our interactions are driven by a shared sense of respect for all opinions and people. When in doubt about how to treat our fellow travelers, we ask:

• Am I being helpful, or detracting from the productivity of this conversation?
• Would I behave this way offline? What if I had to see my fellow community members at the grocery store, a neighborhood party, or the local café?
• If I were new to the community, would this make me feel welcome?
• Could this hurt someone’s feelings?
• Would I say this in front of my mother or kids?

TripAdvisor is our online home. As a community, we hold the power and responsibility to make our home as fun, inviting, and helpful as we want. To strengthen its foundation, we abide by the set of guidelines listed below. We take care to report any content that falls outside of our guidelines and rely on one another to do the same.

Community Guidelines (updated 3/27/09)

Postings must be family-friendly.

• We do not allow objectionable language and images, including but not limited to profanity, obscenity, vulgarity, racial/ethnic slurs, hate speech, personal insults, hostile comments, and threatening language. All the standard curse words are banned (you know what they are), and we will remove messages that contain clever (or not clever) misspellings intended to circumvent our content filters.
• We will remove posts that promote or seek advice on engaging in illegal activities. This includes the purchase or sale of illegal substances (as per the laws of the destination); contributing to the delinquency of a minor; procuring fake IDs; purchase or sale of designer knock-offs, bootleg CDs, DVDs or video games and other black-market items; smuggling items through customs; and bribery of officials.
• We do not permit graphic descriptions of death or injury due to accidents, negligence, or criminal acts. As a result, we will close or remove topics that describe violent crimes, accidental death, or serious injury. If a tragic event directly affects travel to a particular destination (for instance, a natural disaster or a situation that has shut down streets, airports, or accommodations), we will permit family-friendly, travel-related discussions about the event.

TripAdvisor forums are for travel-related discussions. They are not chat rooms.

Many of our most active members have found great friends on our forums, and we love that! However, please help us keep the destination forums as relevant as possible. We encourage you to use private messaging as the best way to check in with all of your forum buddies. Messages or threads that are not relevant to the topic of a particular forum are subject to closure or removal.

All of the following topics will be removed or closed:

• Searches for employment or offers of employment.
• People searches (looking for a long-lost friend or relative for example) or genealogical research.
• Calls for boycott of any destination.
• Social commentary, political debates, and religious discussions that have no direct relevance to travel.
• Petitions or calls for government action in local politics or criminal investigations.
• Personal ads and questions or advice on finding dates or sexual partners.
• Multiple messages containing identical or nearly identical text. This is considered spam and when we discover it, we will remove all copies.
• Listings that include real estate purchases, apartment rentals or similar solicitations. Exception to this rule: A discussion providing short-term relocation advice is acceptable provided it remains relevant to travelers moving or looking to move to that destination. Orientation to neighborhoods, travel logistics, visa requirements, or even post-arrival "thanks, everyone" updates are welcome, whereas asking for help finding roommates, buying/selling furniture or ongoing personal updates are not considered travel-related.

Harassment of other members will not be tolerated.

TripAdvisor encourages active discussions in our forums, even those about controversial topics, but the forums can only flourish if all members feel welcome and safe. If you can't offer friendly advice to a fellow traveler, it may be wiser to move along to the next thread.

We will not tolerate:

• Argumentative, off-topic exchanges
• Multiple messages targeting any member(s) for insults, attacks, or personal comments
• Challenges to another member's right to participate on our site
• Sarcastic asides and snide comments
• Allegations about a specific person or property on TripAdvisor. To give us your feedback on a specific person or property, you'll need to contact us directly.

Self-promotion, advertisements, solicitation and SPAM are strictly prohibited.

We welcome referrals, recommendations, and critiques from our members and generally have no objection to the inclusion of links to travel-related sites, commercial or personal. However, the content must be directly relevant to a discussion underway. If sharing a link (whether the related site is yours or not) or your contact information does not directly relate to and significantly benefit the travel-related discussion at hand, then refrain from sharing it. Please take note of these special situations:

Business owners and representatives

• We would never walk into your home and start posting ads for our web site, so don’t do that to our community and us. Please refrain from posting commercial links and commercial or personal contact information for your business unless it is directly requested. Please do not proactively volunteer it. We encourage you to include information about your business in the "About Me" section of your profile page so that members can easily find more information about you or your business.
• As a business representative, you are a welcome and special guest on our forums. If you'd like to participate in a discussion related to your business or a competitor's business, we ask that you clearly state your affiliation as a representative. Our members are entitled to this information so that they can be aware of any potential bias in your comments. A simple statement like, "Hi, I'm John from XYZ Tours," is sufficient disclosure.
• There are times when business representatives may want to join a conversation that is NOT directly related to their business. In these cases, we allow, but do not require, you to mention your affiliation with a specific business. Business representatives may NOT use this as an opportunity to solicit new clients, provide contact information, or post commercial links.
• We encourage you to post professional responses to comments regarding your business and to make a sincere effort to resolve complaints, but please do not use this as an opportunity to solicit new clients. Failure by business representatives to adhere to these guidelines may lead us to revoke your posting privileges.
• You must completely refrain from posting any critical comments about your competitors.

Signatures on forum posts

• If you have a blog or other personal website, it’s ok to link to it in your “sign-off” or signature. For instance, this is ok:
  Regards,
  Joe
  thisismytravelblog.com
  We understand that many personal blogs now include paid advertisements. In these cases, you may still provide a blog link in your signature. However, you may not link to a strictly commercial website or a blog affiliated with or promoting any one property or business.

Screen names

• If you are an official representative of a hotel or destination marketing organization on TripAdvisor, you may choose a screen name to reflect the name of your organization. (In fact, destination-marketing organizations are required to do this.) This is not considered self-promotion. However, we prohibit the inclusion of commercial links or contact information in your screen name.

Journalists soliciting members for research

• If you are a journalist performing research on a travel-related subject, it is generally acceptable to post on our forums in an effort to gather stories from real travelers. When asking the community to share their stories, you must state that you are a journalist, give your full name, explain the purpose of your research, and divulge the source (newspaper or online) with which you are affiliated. If possible, include a link to your bio or byline, but please do not share your contact information in the TripAdvisor forums. Along the same lines, do not ask members to share their contact information with you. To communicate with a member, simply ask them to initiate contact with you through our private messaging system. For instance, you might say, “Send me a private message if you are interested in contributing.”

Charitable Organizations

We admire that so many of our members are committed to enriching the lives of others while they travel. We welcome you to tell your fellow members about the organizations you support, but please keep in mind the following guidelines:

• You must add your charity's name and website link to your profile. You may also add your affiliation to the charity if applicable. TripAdvisor reserves the right to request proof of documentation for your respective charity affiliation.
• When posting, do not include direct or indirect requests for donations or contributions.
• When posting, do not include links to charitable organizations.

Do not post contact or personal information about other members without permission.

We ask all members to respect the privacy of others, and refrain from exposing the real names, home addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of other members. We do allow members to include the names and contact information of business representatives or property owners in their comments regarding that particular business, property or service.

Note: If you include your own personal information in a forum post, it will be viewed and potentially used by any and all who see it... including people you'd probably rather not hear from.

Every person is limited to one screen name.

Consider your screen name to be your passport to the TripAdvisor travel forums. Every person is limited to one forums screen name; members with multiple screen names will be banned. Do not create screen names to impersonate other members or TripAdvisor staff or you'll quickly be deported from the forums.

No misrepresentation of TripAdvisor's staff, policies, or procedures.

False or speculative claims about TripAdvisor, our policies, and procedures will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Screen names and forum posts should not contain anything that would represent you as a member, representative, or ambassador of TripAdvisor staff. Private correspondence with TripAdvisor staff should not be reproduced, summarized, or discussed in the public forums unless TripAdvisor staff specifically requests it. Typically, if we want information to be public knowledge, a TripAdvisor staff member will post it, or we will publish it under an official TripAdvisor announcement, also known as a sticky topic.

Feedback about TripAdvisor must be limited to the Help us make TripAdvisor better forum or communicated directly to TripAdvisor.

We love hearing your thoughts on how to make TripAdvisor better, but keep in mind that our travel forums are not the best place to share your comments. In most cases, feedback in these forums takes the conversation off-topic from travel. More importantly, we may not even see your comments in these forums, unless or until someone reports them to us as off-topic or inappropriate. Please visit the Help us make TripAdvisor better forum to discuss your ideas.

Please keep in mind that the Help us make TripAdvisor better forum is not the place to make allegations about specific people or properties on TripAdvisor. To let us know your feedback on a specific person or property, you'll need to contact us directly.

Post carefully and respectfully, as posts cannot be edited.

This means you can't change your spelling, fix your grammar or take back any off-hand comments you may have made. A single profanity, hostile comment or personal insult - even in a well-considered post - can lead to the removal of a post.

No posting copyrighted material or content published elsewhere.

We ask members not to post any information that they do not have permission to make available, including but not limited to: copyrighted material from any online or printed publication (news agencies, magazines, books, travel guides, television or radio program transcripts), trademarks, passwords, subscription/members-only discount codes, confidential information, or the intellectual property of any other individual or business.

This restriction includes reproduction of your own reviews, trip reports, travel advice, journals or blogs that you have previously published elsewhere, as well as content written by other authors. We seek to publish original content and avoid issues of ownership and copyright-infringement from any other source.

No HTML or JavaScript

Our forums software will not accept HTML formatting, JavaScript, animated gifs or photo attachments in the body of a forum message. However, URLs in forums posts will automatically be hyperlinked. Note that technical measures are in place to prevent abuse of this feature. Posts with link spam will be removed.

You must be at least 13 years old to post.

This is not something we decided arbitrarily - it's the law.

TripAdvisor reserves the right to remove any post for any reason.

We’d like to keep removal of posts to a minimum, but we will take the necessary action to keep our forums welcoming and conducive to helpful discussion.