My TA most helpful votes are pretty equally divided between positive and negative reviews and include a hotel and a garden in Germany and a several mid level hotels ranging from boutique to chain in the USA.
I use other reviews by looking for cleanliness reports, location information, and specific information about services and equipment. I discount restaurant reviews that begin " I never eat ( blank) food but ... or reviews that say " this was our first time to ( cruise, stay in a hotel or b and b . I also tend to discount reviews that rave over a place or ones that complain about picky service details ( No bagels at breakfats? Shame !) Shills usually are obvious.

I also compare the reviews from TA with the onces at booking.com. To post a review at booking.com you need to have a reservation made through them, while at TA anyone can write, and there is no any control if you really have been there or not.

Hello,
do you guys use TripAdvisor? To me it is not very convenient. So I just curious maybe I'm doing something wrong. How do you use it? For hotels search or for the interesting locations?

Thank you.

As a heavy Yelp user, I've found it helpful for places that don't have Yelp, like Asia. While not as reliable, I still find it very useful to see what the popular and highly rated places are.

I use it primarily for top "must-see" attractions and restaurants. The community-based travel guides/lists are also helpful.

Hotels are good for making sure you're not getting a good deal on a slum.

I used to use it a fair amount, but now hardly at all. I find the reviews to be extremely unreliable, with a good number seemingly not motivated by helpfulness but by some form of crusade about one thing or another.

To me, and I don't stay in 5 or 6 star properties but in 3 or 4 star properties generally, and never chains if I can possibly avoid them, a good hotel is about the sum of its parts. It seems, however, that many TripAdvisor commentators have little sense of balance - unless a property has this or that, it is "the worst hotel in the world", without considering the trade-off. I'm also aware that hotels will add spoof reviews on their sites as well, so it's a complete minefield and thus quite unreliable.

And, as for restaurants, it's a total joke. So many of the reviewers wouldn't know good food if it stares them in the face, judging quality by quantity, or by how fast it's shovelled in front of them. They might mark down an Italian restaurant because it's "slow" - sorry, that's how people like it in Italy, or a Japanese restaurant because it has small portions etc.

In short, I'd use TripAdvisor only if there were no alternatives - but there almost always are options, and usually they are available in English.

I use Trip Advisor to research attractions in a given area. Since the information is so location specific and highlights not just the big attractions but also the hidden good and bad attractions, I find it very useful especially when I am stuck at a given location for a longer period of time. I can really explore.

Hotels and restaurant reviews are always taken with a grain of salt.

A long long time ago, I used to contribute regularly to TripAdvisor but found that my reviews got drowned out by the sheer number of superficial or crusade reviews that I've mostly stopped bothering. I always stop by TripAdvisor when planning but either never linger long or have to really spend time to plough through a large number of reviews to really understand what a single property is like.

The conclusion? It just takes too much time to find really useful information.

Let's move this over to Travel Tools...

I find that if you read TA too much, you'll never go anywhere. Also, the problem is that you don't know about the reviewers and their taste. Look at the #1 rated hotel in NYC...Doesn't seem likely to be the "best" does it?

The best part of TA for hotels in my opinion is the pictures submitted by users.

For hotels, someone I work with who uses TripAdvisor a lot suggested a method I have found is helpful. Select the negative reviews and evaluate the nature of complaints and see if those issues matter to you. For me, mouse in the restaurant is different than I had to wait at check in (I have seen a mouse in a SF hotel restaurant scrambling over a banquette).

Also, one can filter on type of traveler (business vs. Vacation) and that often helps identify reviews that may be more relevant. The biggest issue I find is when the reviewing population has a variety of profiles.

Thanks everybody for the responses. Very interesting to see different people experience. So my understanding that TA is a primary source of reviews for places.
I just don't like that it is so hotel oriented. Even I'm looking for attractions it always shows me hotels instead. But I'll give it another try.

Thank you.

+ 1

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.

I use TA extensively for hotel selection. But it's important to be able to read between the lines (since some reviews are inaccurate or bogus) and to read as many reviews as possible for a hotel. But the ability to check multiple sites for the best room rates is very useful--and has saved me a lot of money over the last couple of years.

I understand that things can and do change overnight, but I'm really not fond of TripAdvisor's decision to close a thread after a certain period of time (I think it's six months). Half of the things I do a search for to plan for my trips end up at inactive TA threads, so that's where wikitravel (unfortunately) sometimes picks up the slack.