Perhaps another sign that TripAdvisor is moving into a new phase with the user review giant scrapping its annual and often controversial Dirtiest Hotels series.
For many years the website had published a list every January outlining the worst hotels in each region, compiled by user feedback from the previous 12 months.
The methodology was simple: accommodation providers found themselves included on the list if users had scored a property for cleanliness.
The list made for fantastic PR for TripAdvisor but inevitably angered many of those hoteliers featured on it, especially as comments ranged from "hell on earth", "not safe for humans", "dirty, filthy pit" and "a complete dive".
A TripAdvisor official confirms the annual PR push is now history, following comments made by CEO Steve Kaufer earlier this week to the New York Times in which he said the company wanted to "stay more on the positive side".
"We’re slicing and dicing the 'best of' in different ways this year, more than focusing on the negative."
The move coincides with TripAdvisor finding itself in the financial limelight following its spin-off and subsequent public listing by former parent company Expedia in December last year.
The apparent maturing and change of emphasis around its PR activity follows a subtle change to its on-site messaging in September 2011 from "reviews you can trust" to "reviews from our community".
This switch came on the eve of the launch of an investigation by the UK regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority, into claims reviews on TripAdvisor are untrustworthy, following a complaint by reputation management service Kwikchex, a long-time thorn in the side of TripAdvisor.
Kaufer admitted to the NYT that one of the reasons for the Dirtiest Hotels lists was for the PR, but conceded it is "less interested in that angle" now.
An official says the Dirtiest Hotels campaign had previously run in the US and the UK, as well as some countries in Europe and Asia-Pacific. The campaign will no longer run in any country, the official confirms.