It seems popular to mock the people who write for Trip Advisor and IMO that is wrong. It offers a good service to people who are often led astray by misleading Holiday brochures.

Many of us like to think we know what's best because we pay a high price for it and when somebody challenges our view we don't want to be shown up. For all I know the Sofitel in New York could be a better hotel than The Trump - but if your paying twice the price at the Trump you might not want to admit it or be told it.

I've stopped in many of the 4 and 5 star hotels in London over the years and the Sofitel in London is a great 5* and certainly a lot better than some others that charge almost twice the price, and my view seems to be shared by many others at Trip Advisor - so you may say they are wrong, but in the case of London I don't think they are.

With a bit of effort you can get value from the site and you can work out which reviews to take notice of - the ones where people look like they've made an effort to properly review the hotel as opposed to the often quick 4 line - it was wonderful / bad / joyous / filthy. I've written several reviews recently for trip advisor, always making the effort to describe the complete experience. I'd like to think my reviews would help someone make a valued judgement as to stop at a place or not.

I also find that trends develop in the reviews, and you get a clear perception that the hotel is not what it once was (Baan Taling Ngam a case in point).

I also find the candid photo's very useful.

Trip Advisor's overall assessment of Luxury will be different to this forums because of the vast number of people who submit reviews cw this forum - High Price is less of an issue here and much more significance is made on whether or not a property is FS, RC, MO - or if its Virtuosa or not.