I use it for hotels and have learned how to sift out the bogus or unnaturally biased. I write hotel reviews myself, under this username. Generally I find the hotel searches very useful, especially in parts of my own country, the UK, and I distrust most hotel guides since most of them are paid advertising. Guides hardly ever inspect hotels - even Michelin is woefully inadequate in this respect and The Good Hotel Guide lacks standards. TA reviews hotels on a daily basis. And that must be good. The photos are often more helpful than words.

I NEVER use TA for restaurants. It's useless in my view. And I never use it for sightseeing as I tend to know where I want to go and what I want to see. I actually find the photo website Flickr most useful in this respect.

However, I do think it would be useful if TA had an auto-delete mechanism for all hotel reviews over, say, 5 years old and all restaurant reviews over 2 or 3 years old.

Best post of the day about TripAdvisor, particularly in terms of dining. And their purchase of SeatGuru has been a bit of a disaster - full of errors, omissions and lack of updating.

For hotels (and I have added some reports) I do a lot of reading between the lines and extrapolation, but have found some decent reviews (read the trends, as well).

I find it useful but like any information you get you have to scan it for the truth. you can sift through the good and the bad stuff.

Its useful for hotel information - I have asked the same questions on FT and not got an answer but got it promptly on TA.

By the way I am a DE but open minded about it all.

For specific destinations as a tourist TA can be very useful, which train or bus to I get and get off at what stop - where is the best street food etc

I've obviously spend too much time on TA, I'm a DE too.

TA is a good jumping off spot to find an attraction or hike or excursion. The reviews are helpful, but we really just use it as a starting off point to offer ideas for a new area and then research further with other tools.

I have been a regular contributor to Tripadvisor and my one negative review of a touring company was deemed not acceptable to be published. However I heard from the owner of the company wanting to know the reasons for my negative review. Since my post wasn't published, I would have to assume that all reviews are submitted to those who advertise heavily on Tripadvisor first and they can nix the negative reviews.
This tour company has over 400 positive reviews and I wonder how many are shills. From this experience, all reviews are not to be trusted.

I just had a post rejected by TA because they said I had violated their guidelines. This is a shock to me as I've had more than 30 posts on hotels. This one is for a touring company.However, the owner of the touring company wrote me so I think TA is being bullied by this advertiser to reject my post.
I wrote back to TA asking which specific guideline I had violated but never heard back. So beware of glowing reviews especially on items other than hotels. The negative ones get rejected.

If you can, post your review here and maybe we can discuss if anyone can see why it would be rejected.

I had one review rejected because I had links posted to regulations for renting out vacation rentals but once I removed that and just paraphrased the rules they posted it.

I still use (and post reviews) to TripAdvisor. I like to help other people out, and I hope I put enough detail in my reviews for people to know I've actually been to a property and spent some time there. I'd say I have a mix of reviews, some positive, some negative. No censorship (yet) from TripAdvisor about it.

As a rule, I look through the pictures and read associated reviews. After all, at least there's some(?) proof the person has been to the property, or at least has a photo of it. The fakes haven't quite figured this one out yet. The level of detail in someone's description is a dead giveaway. Even the Ritz-Carlton gets things wrong at times. There should be at least some things every hotelier can improve, and I try to make it a point of putting these in my reviews.

I also am annoyed with the VFM Leonardo photos all over the place. Yes, it's nice to have A photo vs. NO photo, but the VFM photos are unreliable at best.

Great example of fake reviews & fake/old VFM Leonardo photos: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Rev...nnecticut.html

Take a look at the traveler photos vs. VFM Leonardo's. VFM's photos are from a much rosier time. Also take a look at the reviewers who posted positive things about the property. All their first and only review, usually from the area no less, if you believe their profiles. I don't. I drove past the place. It's a dump.

I use TA a lot. I realize that 1/2 the reviews could be fake. I've gotten in the habit recently to post reviews that I think might be useful. I tend to travel alone and sometimes certain places only have reviews from couples or family. But I only use it hotels and tour guides. I don't use it much for resturants.

Thanks for the tip on VFM Leonardo...

Turns out this is a Hotel marketer getting paid to help hotels http://vfmleonardo.com/

Tripadvisor should IMO simply ban any posts by them.

I think TripAdvisor is very helpful.I am not totally agree with your points.

Definitely egregious and not even faked well.

The unfortunate thing is that most people just believe what they read on the internet is true. Most people are not like FT'ers. Most people DON'T use common sense.

Exactly - TA earns millions of dollars from people submitting reviews for free.

TA is most useful (for me) with their forums. But I rarely use their reviews unless I have already decided on a property or if I want to know certain facts (not subjective review info). How far to the nearest bus stop for example might be something I look for. But I disregard reviews by people with just a handful of reviews as well as reviews that are glowingly positive or negative. A LOT of reviews are fakes, plain and simple. But TA won't delete them because they can tout how many million reviews they have and can earn more advertising $$ based on hits.