I have noticed that, as well and all are posted by VFM Leonardo, which I assumed was TA's name for management-uploaded photos.

+1

Personally, I don't think there are that many places that would buy or manufacture seemingly legitimate profiles for the purpose of generating positive reviews. My guess is it would be too costly.

I usually filter out any hotel where there is the wrong distribution of reviews (too many poor/terrible reviews vs. the number of very positive reviews). Assuming that a place that has a lot of false positives would bring in a bunch of unsuspecting travelers who then would produce a bunch of poor reviews.

But we agree on the fact that TA could do a much better job of managing the reviews and photos.

The "professional" photos always show up under "traveller" photos - it is the same for every property. VFM do a lot of the pro-shots for Marriotts (pull up Marriott Waterfront Seattle for example) - there is no review associated with the photos (a blue titled item beneath the photo). There isn't anything dishonest going on - it is very easy to tell the pro photos from the amateur ones, just see which ones are under the blue "professional photos" link first.

could you explain how i can tell pro from amateur, what is the blue link?

My biggest problem with TA of late is the censoring of threads. There is a need to sugar coat the destinations that borders on fraudulent. Just recently, the Anguilla board was scrubbed of several threads related to an attempted armed robbery at Blanchard's and a robbery at Little Bay. Some of these posts had close to 200 comments. All gone. Other posters reported a similar pattern on the T&C board. If these boards are meant to give a true picture of a destination, leaving out crime reports seems to leave a gaping hole. This points to a very cozy relationship to the destinations, hotels, etc. at the expense of truth.

TA is still extremely useful IMHO. I use it all the time and have had pretty consistent results over the times I have used it.

If you're only looking at overall ratings, then it can be pretty useless, but if you actually read through and do real research it is still extremely useful.

Last year we were planning a trip to Africa and the TA recommended a lodge. I checked on trip advisor where a robbery of guests was detailed. I toldthetravel gent what ihadseen pretty reputable outfit who climbed not to know the details. He did check it out and the info on tripadvisor was true. I receivedan update from the lodge manager as well. I guess I thinkitwas from the lodge.

I think everything on tripadvisorneeds to be seen as only partly factual. There are no objective standards of measurement their algorithm for ratings is not really valid are not weighted for number of responses and without knowing the profile of the traveler and their preferences it may not be useful info. Is it his a first time young budget traveler who thinks 200 dollars a night is a lot of money for a hotel ? From a different culture where the different levels of service are expected?

Was it your own personal experience during a stay you were writing about? I don't think they're looking for news item submissions.

This is a very good point. For the sake of argument, what would be a decent algorithm? TA says all entries are reviewed before being published. Maybe they could simply assign a subjective weighting to each one, let's say on a scale of 0 to 5, based on a reading of the review for believability and the posters history. They could then do something like

∑(Rating)(Rating) *Wt

(don't know how to make a superscript in FT)

If Yelp can do it, I don't know why TA couldn't. It shouldn't be that hard. As it is now, you can just about get a top 10 rating in a city simply by having 20 people with 1 review each giving a rating of 5. It's easy to filter those, but TA's algorithm should be doing that.

I think there are a number of things that don't add up with their ratings. If one hotel has 8 good ratings and no bad it could come up higher rated than 200 reviews with a different distribution. And yes the number of reviews should factor in since more history should theoretically be valued more highly. Maybe there should be a newly rated but until there are x number of reviews it ant be on the list.

But a more basic question is what is being rated on a TA review? Who is the average
reviewer? A 3 4 5 star traveler? Young old ? Domestic traveler mostly but reviewing first international experience? if my profile isn't like the reviewer their information may not be useful. Unbiased does not mean useful correct reliable or repeatable. Buyer beware.

I agree with you 150 percent. I have stayed at nice hotels and read the TripAdvisors ratings with a grain of salt. If a hotel is an AAA 4 diamond then I can trust that AAA took the time necessary to reserve it.

TripAdvisor is good for photos and its fun to read what others have posted. I write honest reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor as I consider myself a seasoned traveler who loves helping others.

I disagree. Anyone with a computer anywhere in the world can crank these things out, and they do it for as little as a couple of bucks per fake review.

Nope. Wrong. Go here for an example: Alpina Gstaad. The bad reviews are correct. All ( and I mean ALL 18) of the good reviews are fakes and they all read as if they were written by the same person. You can even pick out the date that management decided that the bad reviews needed to be countered.

We have also been places where at the check in desk there have been not so subtle requests to add a positive review on TA. Its not easy for he small operator and the internet is a nig stage Big hospitality enterprises have always had marketing budgets and can get their name in lights more easily. Some of the best hotels in india have bad and nit picky reviews on ta that really surprised me Otoh we choose a place to stay in a small town in new Zealand Based on TA reviews and it was terrific. Expectations of travel experiences are very personal

I had no problem getting reviews published where I clearly wrote that the hotel is often frequented by prostitutes (don't ask me why I was there - it was the only half-affordable place and the hotel itself wasn't so bad)