Originally Posted by
Braindrain
I find TripAdvisor mediocre in terms of usefulness.
I pay no attention as to what ranks in the top 10 hotels as FF traveling habits seem to vary significantly from the "mom & pop" travelers.
However, as others have mentioned, the nuggets are in the reviews themselves, after you ignore the 1-2 liners that have next to useless info.
I then back it up with searching reviews on FT, which are much more targeted to experiences with folks with higher tiers in hotel programs.
I am much like you. Actually I am a Destination Expert in one of the forums on TA and the forums are great. But reviews of many hotels are manipulated. In fact, TA is in the process of being sued by hoteliers in both the UK and US because of this.
Originally Posted by
Camflyer
My general rule of thumb with Trip Advisor is to ignore the top 20% and bottom 20% of reviews. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.
And I ignore most reviews by posters with just 1-3 contributions. Many, though not all, of these, are bogus.
It is a known fact that some hotels solicit reviews from guests. So you get an influx of reviews from some hole-in-the-wall new property and it becomes a #1 or #2 of 300 hotels.
Same with attractions. Segway tour in Anchorage is the #1 attraction? And the antique car museum the #1 attraction in Fairbanks? You can readily see how absurd that is.
TA is a business. They command huge advertising revenue by the "hits" they get. They don't do all they can to weed out the fake reviews. They also don't stand up to defend posters of controversial reviews. One reviewer of a hotel in the UK mentioned that the hotel "lost" their reservation and it was fully booked up for their wedding and reception. The hotel bullied them into removing the review (threat of a lawsuit) even though the review was accurate and only had facts. TA did nothing to stand by to defend the reviewer. They took the easy way out and just removed the review at the request of the poster. This is all documented on the Help Us Make Trip Advisor Better forum.
As with anything, caveat emptor. TA is a tool and nothing more.