Originally Posted by
battensea
The 5-star places I'd stayed at and had excellent experiences with would occupy the top of the Tripadvisor ranks. Nowadays, for some locations there's a good chance you will find some dinky 2- or 3-star place with adequate but not exceptional customer service rated as the number one hotel rather than a 4- or 5-star hotel that has good or excellent service in the same area.
There's also the issue of Hotel Class (stars) versus Traveler Rating (circles). The Hotel Class data is provided by a third party and does not include all of the hotels on the site. So, for example, if you are looking at hotels in Playa del Carmen there are 186 properties listed. However, only 102 of them have been given a star rating. If you limit by Hotel Class, you may be missing out on a property that fits your criteria simply because it hasn't been given a star rating yet.
I'm still a huge fan of the site and use it regularly, but it can take some serious sleuthing to find what I need.