IT’S one of those websites which has quickly become a household name.

TripAdvisor is based on the principle that the best people to review holidays are the people who bought them.

That sounds sensible enough, but the rapid rise of this dotcom company has thrown up some problems. Just ask Ken Robins, who says he has had a host of problems after a reviewer on TripAdvisor likened his hotel to a brothel.

The anonymous reviewer didn’t say it actually was a brothel. She said it was “like sleeping in a brothel” and that “all they needed was a red light”.

It was just a comparison that must have struck the writer as amusingly harsh. But people sometimes respond to what they think they’ve read, rather than what they’ve actually read – and all kinds of misunderstandings and unpleasantness have followed.

Readers should be armed with a pinch of salt.