Originally Posted by
Christopher
On TripAdvisor, you can choose your country from the little flag in the top right-hand corner; clicking on the flag that is on display will bring up a menu of flags.
I had the Union Flag selected. It made no difference.
This works while you're doing the searching; when it comes to paying, or even requesting prices, the site may revert back to that of the country that you're in (or that the site thinks you're in, or ought to be in...). When this happens, it ought to work if you alter the url manually in the address bar; so, if you're at <...tripadvisor.de[blah-blah-blah]> and you want the UK site, change it to <...tripadvisor.co.uk[blah-blah-blah]>, leaving the "blah-blah-blah" part unchanged. This ought to allow you to reserve and pay using the UK site.
Tripadvisor isn't a booking site. It just acts as a search engine - it searches booking sites and then brings them up in separate windows. If it thinks you're in Germany then it sends you to German booking sites - you don't get any choice in the matter, they just pop up. Some (like booking.com) will let you switch language and currency once you've got there, but you can't - for example - switch from expedia.de to expedia.co.uk because you will lose the results of Tripadvisor's search.
This sort of thing is not unique to TripAdvisor. Why do websites that do this? Do they think that they are providing a service to their users? Or is there some perceived advantage to themselves?
Some others - like Google - have stopped doing this. Used to drive me crazy when they would send me to google.pl or google.lt based on my IP address.