We have 100,000 karting customers per year at the Daytona venues. Our aim is to always deliver what we promise and, if possible, exceed our customers’ expectations. We believe that we get it right most of the time. If we don’t then we expect our customers to tell us and give us a chance to make it up to them.

The growth of the web review sites is generally seen as a good thing. Trip Advisor and Google Reviews can be really useful research tools when you are looking for a venue or supplier but they can also be abused.

Recently we were notified of some questionable negative reviews about one of our venues and some very dubious positive reviews about one of our competitors. We looked into the negative reviews made about us and immediately set about investigating the circumstances. It didn’t take too long for us to identify that the reviews were fake.

Firstly the reviewer had not posted any other reviews about anything. That always makes us wonder if the reviewer is a real person. Secondly we record details of everyone who drives at our circuits. We were thus able to look up the names used by the reviewers and prove that they had never raced with us – at any of our venues. Thirdly the content of the reviews referred to products and sessions we don’t actually sell. For example one review referred to booking a 30 minute session with us, when we don’t actually sell 30 minute sessions at that venue.

Having satisfied ourselves that the negative reviews were fake, we took a look at the positive reviews of another karting operator that we had been asked to look into. We were asked to look at them by the review website itself as they were concerned that they might be false. We wondered if the fact that the “reviewers” were using names such as “SVettel” had tipped off the website but apparently their systems are a lot cleverer than that and they were able to identify the fakes by a number of technical clues.

We were very pleased to be told that both the false negatives about us and the fake positives about others would all be removed from the sites in question and apparently the other circuit operator’s reviews would be vetted in future to ensure that they weren’t abusing the system to make themselves look better than they really are.

We recommend Trip Advisor as the best source of reviews – however we would urge you to ensure that the positive reviews are genuine! If you have raced at Daytona and had a good time, then please do feel free to review us online. If, for any reason, your visit did not meet or exceed your expectations, then please contact us and tell us why so that we can do everything possible to improve what we do for our future customers.