Hi agree with you on this:

The attractions section of TA is the worst! I’ve given up on trying to use TA to figure out the “Can’t Miss” attractions while planning vacations as the good stuff is always buried under Segway tours, bus tours, and pirate ship excursions.

I think tripadvisor is a great resource for choosing hotels. I think I am able to weed through reviews that may be planted. The traveller pictures are a big plus. However I really have a problem with the activities section. You have a mish mash of random things to do, tour companies, tour guide companies and the like. Think better categorization should have been done.

For finding tour guides, I tend to favour tourhq.com, which allows you to research tour guides at the destination and even allows you to contact them directly. What I like is that there is no middle man, so no commission to be paid. The tour guide gets to keep the entire fees, so I feel I am giving back a bit to the local community that I am visiting.

Wish there was something like that for attractions and the like.