Note that I am bemoaning the change in reliability. Tripadvisor was never perfect, but it used to be more useful for my purposes. I think that as the number of reviewers and sources of reviews have grown, the quality of reviews has declined. The percentage of reviews generated by less-discerning first-time travelers seems to have exploded.

I review in the same way as you. My complaint is not that 3-star hotels are being rated more highly than 5-star hotels. It's that 3-star hotels with half-assed service charging rates typical for their class are being rated more highly than 5-star hotels with top-notch service charging rates typical or even low for their class.

Or even take the photos. It used to be that when reviewer-submitted photos first began to be posted, almost all the photos were of the hotels themselves. Now it's very common to find photos of local attractions that have nothing to do with the hotel. I only want to see a photo of the Eiffel Tower on a review about a Paris hotel if that photo shows the view of the tower from one of the hotel rooms! And I don't want to see photos showing how cute someone's kids are! Just show the hotel!

I find TA useful, but like many here, by reading the comments rather than focusing on the stars/ranking. If there are enough reviews, you can get a good sense of the place.

It's not all about the stars! I have a number of reviews to post up around Xmas, but for me it's the experience in the hotel vs. the price.

On my last big trip the Ibis in Wellington stood out as a great (4*) hotel, thought it only has a 2* rating. It's clean, the showers are good, bed comfy. The food is fine, it's in a good location and the staff are great.

I always read the "poor" reviews for a good laugh - sometimes they are useful, othertimes........

I agree with you 100% here. I have written many reviews for TA and always keep the value for money proposition in mind when I write the review. I also think many of the reviews are really about expectations. People book at three-star hotel and then judge it on five-star standards. You can read this all the time when people write that a particular hotel did not have a bellman or free breakfast when neither amenity is listed on the hotel website or offered at the hotel.

I would like to see TA put hotels for large cities into three different categories: luxury, mid-class, and budget. I feel this would make sifting through hundreds of hotels (2000+ for Paris!) more manageable.

You can do that now at TA by using the hotel class function (1-5 stars). You can also sort by price, limit the price per night or choose B&B or Specialty Lodging instead of hotels. In short, not that hard to zero in on what your looking for.

I find TA useful but no doubt it is plagued by fake reviews that alter the rankings. And whether or not it's conscious or not I am sure the rankings impact people's perceptions. Personally when I see a hotel high in the ranking and then see dozens of reviews from people with only one contribution, I tend to skip it. I wonder if TA have started to include number of contributions in the ranking algorithm? Someone giving top marks who has already contributed a hundred reviews is more meaningful than a first time poster.

Once I have homed in on a the properties in a region I then tend to cross references with forums like TA's own and here.

I find TA reviews most useful for the reporting of non-subjective, factual information. If an airport-area hotel has no free shuttle in an area where all of its competitors offer free shuttles, that's important information. Or if a city hotel has an on-property or neighboring nightclub "featuring" loud music until 03:00 every night (Andaz San Diego anyone?), that's also good to know beforehand. Same with lack of workout facilities, business center, etc for those who need those amenities.

The usefulness/reliability factor is reduced once subjectivity enters the picture. One can pluck some useful information from these parts of the reviews, but too many of the self-styled "frequest business travelers" are nothing of the sort - the significant majority of reviews reflect relative inexperience in staying in hotels with any real frequency.

I do find the TA fora useful - one example was when I had problems buying a Renfe online ticket: the TA forum on Spanish rail had the most accurate, clear;y-written explanation of the issues faced by those trying to use U.S. based credit cards on the Renfe website. ^

I agree that reporting of factual things like whether part of the hotel is under construction or whether there is a loud nightclub on the premises are useful bits of info that sometimes you won't find anywhere else than tripadvisor.

Unfortunately, tripadvisor just pulls a lot of the other info that ought to be requisite parts of each hotel's profile (hotel shuttle, resort fees, internet access in rooms, etc) from other sites like expedia. In fact, one of the weakest features of tripadvisor is the map feature -- the maps are too small, they are not sufficiently detailed, and they are littered with ads for other properties as the default. (The hotels.com site, as one example, has much more useful maps than tripadvisor. Kayak's maps, on the other hand, are a very mixed bag because a lot of the mapping information is just plain wrong.) If it weren't for these complaints, I'd view the decline in the usefulness of the other aspects of tripadvisor more favorably.

I really wish there were a site which consistently listed all the basic factual data about each hotel in a uniform matter:
- size in square meters (or feet) of each class of rooms
- whether internet access is available in rooms (all rooms or just certain rooms)
- whether the internet access requires a separate fee (and what that fee is, if you are pricing rooms)
- whether there is a fitness room on premises
etc

I'd also like to see an industry-wide standard of hotels posting on their websites when construction in or adjacent to the hotel is planned or underway. Hotels that do not have websites, or smaller hotels that are not able to update their websites frequently enough to incorporate this information, should notify anyone who is booking a hotel of this information at the time the booking is made and allow the guests to cancel their reservations at the time of booking due to the construction.

It's not just the number of reviews that can reveal a shill, it's also the marketing-like language employed. Not a few reviews are worded like the below. No real reviewer would write like this.

"I enjoyed the crisp, 150-thread count, imported Scandanavian comforter. The tasteful rosewood desk and the authentic Herman Miller chair complemented the well-stocked, conveniently located mini-bar."

Oh, puh-leeze!

I totally disagree. I find the key to Tripadvisor is to look for consistency in the reviews. I throw out the one-off review raving about a property or slamming it when all of the other reviews state the opposite opinion. But if numerous reviews note poor housekeeping, lousy poolside service, a disinterested front desk staff, etc., I'll heed the warning.

As another poster said, you've got to READ the reviews, not just trust the star rating.

Seriously, they've gotta crack down on bogus ratings of attractions. In pretty every major city it's something like a bike tour. I completely ignore the attractions section, but the hotel reviews are a bit more helpful (if, as others said, you know the ignore the extremes). I put hotel reviews pretty regularly.

Visiting a foreign city, I am not about to read 25+ reviews x 150 hotels = nearly 4,000 reviews (could be much worse numbers for large cities).

The rankings used to be helpful in narrowing down which hotels' reviews to read. The rankings are based on reviewers' choices, which presumably are a distillation of the impressions described in their narrative reviews.

I usually pick a few hotels based on price/location/etc., then look at tripadvisor's reviews. Rarely is the number 1 hotel the best for me.

I usually check Tripadvisor before I book a hotel and agree with a previous poster to look for consistency in te reviews. I find many reviews off the mark when I compare with my own experiences in certain hotels so I am not that interested in specific very negative or positive reviews. But many reviews for a hotel pointing to a certain drawback do give me someting to hold onto.