I've been a Destination Expert at TA for a few years - basically they "promoted" me for being helpful in a couple of the forums. I mainly use that to kill a few minutes here and there. The forums can be an interesting place. They don't have full time moderation. They rely on users to report bad posts, so what you can end up with is posters ganging up on others who's opinions they don't like. Once they get enough reports the forum software automatically does the deletion. It can be useful to get tips or questions answered on a destination, if it has enough traffic.

I will look at hotel reviews, but usually only to decide which to choose after I have already narrowed down to a short list based on loyalty programs. Same for restaurants. One negative is that their software is rather basic and smartphone app is pretty poor. If I'm on my phone and looking for a restaurant to hit, I am going to go to Yelp and Google maps first and probably not hit TA.