so it is ONLY good for the most isolated places. :D

Well, at the moment TA doesn't want to list my "Ice Camp Barneo", a temporary tent village at the North Pole.

Although many other hotels (Alps) or camps (Africa) are only temporary, as well.

I assume the North Pole location is a bit too political ... :D

TA, if you read this: "Set Barneo free !" :p

Is that Nanning with 6 Mio inhabitants, in Guangxi Province? TA lists 527 hotels, including 17 with 4 or 5 stars. So it's been getting better lately?

That's the place. The problem with the listings is two fold: 1) many of those venues either don't exist at all anymore or the contact info is wrong and ta is very stubborn about correcting such errors; and 2) most successful restaurants couldn't be bother to get on ta. 大众点评is a little better because the list venues on their own. (Once listed it's pretty hard to ignore public feedback.)

Yes, in Dublin at least there are many lesser establishments outranking what is quite simply the finest hotel here. If it was in the top 10 that would be understandable. BUT from the reviews of the higher ranking hotels of equal cost, people seem very happy with their greatly inferior hotels, one thing I do pay attention to, is where the reviewer is from. Some people in general have higher standards than others, I totally respect our American cousins coming home, but when they have a choice of hotel in the best location in town, that once hired Hitlers brother as a belboy, is the preferred hangout of all those well heeled in Dublin, and the hotel where the Irish constitution was written. How the hell can it be out ranked by a half bit american chain box hotel charging more! Tucked away behind a shady side street opposite a pound store. TripAdvisor is not very discerning. Real culture is not to be found through TripAdvisor.

:D reg. bellboy & constitution :D

Absolutely agree reg. non-culture. There is something like the typical Tripadvisor Nr. 1 hotel. By definition, this must be a rather mediocre place.

A Grand (Dame) Hotel doesn't try to please everybody, and will always make the mediocre masses feel a bit insecure and inferior. And probably be a bit unpolished and a bit more expensive. Hence the lower ratings.

This kind of knowledge exists in other circles, but not online.

I even don't like Fours Seasons because they try to give every guest the same standardized service, no matter if flip flops or Chanel costume.

TA has led me to a number of nice places to stay which are not name brand motels. Not expensive properties, but the kinds of places I like to stay in as a base while doing a vacation of mostly hiking. You can get useful feedback on amenities (wifi, microwave, fridge presence/qualities) and some hints about food if there's breakfast too.

You obviously have to read the reviews and throw out 1/4 of them as having no info, being just barbs, or perhaps written by shills. I would agree about the comments with respect to argumentative management, and I'm a bit nervous about my res with one such place later in the summer - though in other respects it sounds like my kind of place. I like the reviews that give me a bit of ability to calibrate, e.g. "Not luxurious but clean and quiet" and complaints about thin walls and creaky floors always get my attention.

I would agree that for chains, TA provides less value, though again comments about the neighborhood, nearby dining, and transportation can be helpful.

I regularly contribute TA reviews.

But I'd always go to Yelp for restaurant reviews, TA only for hotels.

^

So...why is Taiwan on it then?

I have never used TripAdvisor for advice, but I have posted in a few forums.

My usual go-tos are wikivoyage (for airport transit help and hotel "addresses") and/or local language sites.

When you write a review, you should just stick to the facts. Also, adding photos helps.

Because the island of Formosa / Taiwan is part of China?

But yes, they should list properties everywhere.. I wished for a good alternative to TA.. but sadly there are only regional one's, nothing with a coverage anywhere close world wide..

Taiwan isn't politically sensitive (for US).

Palestine is, just like previously Transnistria and Abkhazia, now South Ossetia and some Russian Caucasus Republics (waited a long time to get Chechnya and Ingushetia listed).

Plus my current North Pole request. :D

^

Last week I wrote a lengthy review of the Fairmont Heritage Place SF, giving it 3 stars.
It was followed, very quickly, by a glowing 5 star review which was obviously written
(in a somewhat snarky way) to counter the negatives I raised. It was full of PR speak that made it very suspicious. Upon further examination, this 4 time poster has written 4 reviews. All 5 Stars. All for Fairmount Hotels. Geez, if you are trying to game the system, a bit of subtlety might be in order.

Likewise I recently wrote a review on TripAdvisor about a hotel lobby cafe. It was removed initially. Then reinstated. Then moved away from the hotel itself to the hotel restaurant (not where we were) after the general manager had replied to a few other reviews.

All without any action on my part.

I also noticed other negative reviews had been completely removed.

A Google search indicates that this is common and there has been newspaper reporting that TripAdvisor is less than reliable.

In addition I:

1. Disregard one post reviews.
2. Disregard multiple reviews by one reviewer that rate a single chain with rave positive or negative reviews. They're either hotel staff or some very disgruntled traveler.
3. Spread the ranking because the "statistics" are not reliable. So a hotel in the ranked 5th would probably be nearly as good as a hotel ranked 1st.
4. One I learnt recently: check if a whole set of negative reviews have been "buried" in one of the hotel's other venues on site e.g. poor reviews about a hotel lobby cafe are moved to the hotel restaurant to enhance the overall rating.

Are there any additional strategies for getting the best information? Thanks.

I've found that it's quite helpful for hotels. With the exception of a few places, Flyertalk can have little to no information on a surprising amount of hotels, even among the big chains. I tend to focus on the 2-4 star reviews and 5 star reviews by Top Contributors only.

When I'm looking at dining it's one of several websites (UrbanSpoon, Yelp, Google) I'm using to determine how a place might be. I also write for them, I have 109 reviews I believe.

I use it mainly for the forums. I'll enter "city name forum" in the search bar and very often get information that I would not otherwise have

its not that one cannot find specific information or photos on tripadvisor, its that 99% of tripadvisor is completely worthless. (while i am exaggerating slightly, it REALLY is not that much of exagerration.) so any research takes a lot of time, unless one is only looking at brand new hotels or the most expensive hotels. (thousands of dollars per night.)

fodors is apparently a good/common source particularly for africa for example.

I use it to help pick a place from my shortlist of, typically, 3-4 hotels per destination that I identify based on price/star rating/location.

I never put much weight on individual reviews... it's more the broad strokes that I take note of. I also find the photos people take to be quite useful just to see what the place looks like in real life. (Although I have written close to 100 hotel reviews, I confess I've never posted so much as one photo mainly due to the PITA factor)

I've found it helpful for finding restaurants in cities where I don't know much. When I was going to be in Miami last month, I went to the Miami Beach restaurants, started at #1 and worked my way down until I found one that looked good for me. I've had good luck with this. I used to use iDine but they have too few restaurants now.

I use it for hotels and so far have not had any difficulties with the properties I have chosen based on the reviews. I do note the number of reviews and if there are negative ones I read them and consider if they are a single poster or they have reviewed other places. If they have I will look at their other reviews. I have found some folks that are just hard to please so I just ignore their posts. I have posted reviews on TA as well. I actually negatively reviewed a hotel I did not stay at but was subject to their lack of awareness of their neighbors. The review clearly stated I did not stay there but was negatively influenced by the property. That review is still in place. I also search for reviews of that hotel on other sites as a cross reference.

I see the Yelp/TripAdvisor pairing recurring. I definitely don't see as many/as relevant hotel reviews on Yelp, but I've also heard that many TA reviews are fake. Is there another service that is better out there for authentic opinions?

I read the travel forums and have found great info and ideas. In 2010 I found a hotel in Paris on the forums and will return this November to the same hotel.

i use it to find restaurants in the area and so far found some great seafood restaurants in cape may and wildwood this past weekend.

I just started writing my reviews of hotels on TripAdvisor. Though while researching a hotel stay in DFW (Hyatt House). TripAdvisor had good information, but when I looked on Yelp. It was more "real" reviews. Someone had mentioned there was a cockroach in their room.

Read nothing like that on TripAdvisor. When it came I departed my room early in the morning... Sure enough right outside my door was a cockroach.

Yesterday when I looked at my TA profile I had 31 helpful votes, today I had 43. That seemed odd so I looked back through my reviews. One I gave to a dessert place in Cary last year overnight got 12 helpful votes. So I looked at their other reviews, all the positive reviews have 8-12 helpful votes, all the negative ones have zero. Classy, Coffee and Crepes :rolleyes:

I feel the same goes with yelp, all of the places I like have bad reviews, I put a positive one in for it and get nothing, or it pushed out of the way. :confused::confused::confused:

I have found the TA UI to be pitiful. Searching is a pain, and It hasnt worked correctly on some browsers. On top of that, I feel alot of the reviews are from clueless people :rolleyes: I dont want to see most touristy things in a city thank you....

I'd say TA is as reliable as any compilation of random strangers' opinions is likely to be. I use it frequently but not to be taken as gospel truth, just as one resource to aid in researching and deciding.

Reviews with plenty of pictures are ideal, and really the photos are one of the big things that I find helpful. That way I can see the rooms and property in something other than hotel-produced marketing photos...this alone has made it worthwhile for me on several occasions.

It's hard to know to what extent the reviewer's expectations and perspective really match up with your own, though sometimes you can pick that up from how they word the writeup. I do try and look for any major trends in reviews - e.g., lots of people over time complain about poor housekeeping service.

Sometimes info about nearby transit, attractions, neighborhood quality, and such, can be more useful than the property review itself. A big turnoff for me is seeing the Management arguing in an emotional and unprofessional way with their response to a negative review.

I wish something could be done about the obvious fake reviews, realizing you'll never 100% clean that up.

And then you have the "helpful" abuse...like with CMK10's example, maybe the system shouldn't allow more than X number of votes within a certain time period.

I find TripAdvisor a real pain, and hate how Google searches for restaurants in a city immediately redirect you to TripAdvisor entries. The combination of infrequent traveller reviews from people with bizarre expectations and a policy of heavy moderation/editing makes me stay away from the site. The fact that so many reviews are clearly bunk does not help.

As I recently posted in the New Member section, I recently went to Denmark. I was doing business in a small town in the North. My fellow employee back home told me there are 11 restaurants there according to Trip Advisor, so I'll have no problem finding a decent meal.

So I went through trip advisor's listings:
1 was a legitimate restaurant,
1 was a supermarket,
4 were takeaways/kebab shops (not what I or anyone would call a restaurant),
1 was over 11 miles away,
1 was a McDonald's (I suppose this somewhat counts as a restaurant),
1 was a bar that only served food at midday (more of a Cafe really)
2 didn't exist anymore and hadn't existed for some time.

Just my recent experience...

How was the one legitimate restaurant? ;)

Haha, fantastic. Beautiful food, incredibly expensive (made more expensive by my unpleasant exchange rate), the cheapest meal + a 500ml beer was £20 but covered by expenses after I put forward that going to McDonald's for two weeks was hellishly unfair and not reasonable, so they happily accepted that I go to the only genuine restaurant. Beer was lovely as well (I tended to have more than one although we'll say the rest wasn't on expenses :) )

The lamb fillet was fantastic! One of the best meals I've ever had abroad and I went Venice earlier this year on holiday!

I posted a review a few weeks ago. Got the email that I would be advised when the review was posted. The next day, I had 2 messages from people asking follow up questions to my review.

Two days after receiving those messages, I got the email from Tripadvisor that my review was published.

I get the feeling their review audit process has changed or is non existant.

Agreed. Expedia owns (or controls Trip Advisor). Lately there have been many TV commercials shown in Toronto basically showing a bad room booked by people who had not checked out Trip Advisor rooms and much nicer rooms by people who had - many different cities are featured. The difference in the rooms I am sure is due to price. Certainly 3 star hotels can differ greatly in terms of comfort but Trip Advisor - at least in the commercials appears to be showing a 2 star room versus a 4 star - as booked via Trip Advisor reviews.

I've noticed that too. Earlier in this thread, I mentioned that TA had a practice of rejecting reviews in which I provided the proper addresses and phone numbers of restaurants or announced that they no longer existed. Now they let these slide easily.

I think this is a good synopsis. You can often tell the fake reviews. Too much gushing on the one side, and competitors or people with an ax to grind on the other. It's important to read the reviews vs. just going by rating.

Some observations:

I post my review quite a bit on Tripadvisor.

I would normally post both the good and the bad. I don't think I have came across a hotel, restaurant or place that rated a all good, or all bad.

The rating system tends to be misleading, because ultimately I believe it's about value for money.

Example: If I was staying in a simple B&B (low cost), with no major amenities but great service and breakfast. I would rate it pretty high, cause the rating is based on what I paid for.

On the other hand if I was staying in a high end hotel, or having dinner at a really fancy restaurant. My expectations would be a lot higher, due to the premium I need to pay.

While it may not be practical, I would prefer that all posters have to say something. A 1* or 5* rating (heck, any rating) without any text is useless to me. I know people are lazy, but they have, after all, taken the time to log on to TA and click a few buttons to make a rating. The system could not show any star ratings in the absence of saying "why", in whatever language.