I just have to say how much I love this thread. Why? Because I know that if this thread was posted on TA it would have been taken down by now but we're still here on FlyerTalk. ^

Wendy Perrin Named TripAdvisor Travel Advocate
 

You are absolutely correct that this thread would not exist on the TripAdvisor site due to their censorship and unwillingness to allow member discussion of fraudulent reviews. Many members have tried, all have failed.


But, this just in:
Wendy Perrin Named TripAdvisor Travel Advocate
https://twitter.com/wendyperrin


"I am excited to join TripAdvisor because travelers are looking for the truth and TripAdvisor strives to get to the truth, via the collective intelligence of its unbeatable global community," said Wendy Perrin.

My take: Wendy Perrin is a highly respected journalist and long-time contributor to Conde Nast Traveler (CNT). CNT always strived to tell the truth as did Wendy. How long will she last in an organization with such a different approach to "truth"?

We just returned from Shanghai and I took a quick look at restaurant listings just for fun. The number one restaurant is a very high end "experience" restaurant that probably rates the rating. The second rated is a mediocre Italian restaurant that would not be listed in anyone's top 1000 restaurant. Really?? We are on very good terms with the hotel manger there and she had some choice words for how the Italian restaurant had essentially bullied its way to the top. She also said that everyone who does not get the service or treatment they believe they are entitled to threatens a bad TA report. Some of the bad reports are the most enjoyable to read, they are so picky and the issues are so irrelevant you cant believe they happened or that someone cared about it. I dont think you can believe anything on the site anymore.

Truth in travel... not from the masses... Do your own homework..

The Italian place is actually pretty decent, regardless of whether or not they gamed TA. Of course it's not one of the "best" restaurants in SH by Michelin standards, but when evaluating TA ratings, it's important to bear in mind that most reviewers don't routinely drop $500 on dinner (i.e. there is a value component).

As others have said, the numbers themselves aren't always very helpful, but the reviews can be.

Moondog, I definitely respect your opinon and have followed a lot of your advice that you have given on this forum. You would be a trusted advisor for my travels. Its nice to know that Goodfellas is decent. I definitely agree that there is a value component, and that was kind of my point. Its hard to see the continium when the ranking order swings from the michelin restaurant to fast food and everything in between. I should be more focused on the reviews perhaps, and not the rankings as you suggest. Occupational hazard I guess since Im in a data driven business environment, and the weighting methodology of ta drives me crazy. For me, unless I understand the profile of the reviewer and probably, more importantly, the correlation to my own preferences, there is lots of data but no real information

My take on review sites (and here to a certain extent) is that 80% of the reviews are bragging, 15% are complaining and the truth lies in the 5% left over. If you scan through the garbage, you can usually find the truth.

I agree that our only real option when using TA is to read many reviews discarding those that are obviously bogus or spiteful. My question is why so many reviews fall into our reject bin when TA supposedly has mechanisms in place to eliminate them. To quote TA "A team of quality assurance specialists investigates suspicious reviews which are flagged by our proprietary tools or the passionate TripAdvisor community of more than 50 million monthly visitors." - See more at: http://www.tnooz.com/article/tripadv....Ay4VKwWA.dpuf

Is it simply because the TA monthly visitor count will drop if all those suspicious reviews are removed from search engine indexing? As someone here said, it is a numbers game.

Gaming ta doesn't necessarily need to entail any sort of bogus review component. For example simply asking happy customers to give you a favorable rating as a matter of practice works wonders especially in a place like Shanghai where the vast majority of venue managers don't have a clue about ta. All of the top ten hotels in Shanghai, on the other hand, are well aware of it.

Ta controversy -- Blackmailing
 

This is a lead item on Drudge: Hotels-hostage-to-TripAdvisor-blackmailers. So everybody is gaming TA.

I have long determined that the best travel advice comes from this discussion board and not, say, TA. For those of you that don't wander over the to FT luxury hotels section occasionally, you'll get a kick out of this FT-is-trailer-park-trash-insult. The best travel advice, claims this poster, is from 'F1 races, charity balls, Oscars parties, investor conferences, New Year in St. Moritz, ...' and not FT.

THAT comment stung. So ... I'm looking to remodel my mobile home here in La Jolla. I'll add a bathroom maybe .... or get new wallpaper ....

PS -- Forgot to add that that we all all "virtual nobodies" here on FT.

Tripadvisor is so useless. Full of reviews from people who travel twice a year and have totally unrealistic expectations of hotels, airlines, restaurants. The dead giveaway is when they start their rumblings with "I'm an experienced traveler who takes at least 12 flights a year. Our most recent experience in ............"

Someone who travels once a month would be elite by most standards and should be pretty experienced and have some inkling of what they're talking about... considering that TA is for a broad audience, what's the point of dismissing reviews written by people who are experienced travellers but not necessarily MMers?

FWIW, I find TA to be most useful for assessing hotels that aren't part of a chain. I mean, I pretty much know what I'm getting if I stay at a Renaissance or Courtyard, but if I stay at some independent one-off, it's nice to hear from the voice of experience. I rarely decide to choose or avoid a place on the basis of one review, though... I usually look to the aggregate numbers to make decisions.

I'm Tripadvior's Nr. 1 Explorer with more posts in more countries than others.

Tripadvisor has been very helpful to me in countries where there is absolutely no info, no guide books, no hotel listings, no other sources of information.

For example try to find the best hotel in Khujand, Tajikistan or Magas, Ingushetia without knowing kyrillic. (Both are initially my posts ;) )

My criticism of Tripadvisor in this regards is that

* they are slow to add new properties

* they are politically biased (not listing hotels in countries & places that are not fully recognised by the US)

Tripadvisor is an increasingly poor indicator of hotels & activities...

Don't believe me?

Check out the reviews for the hotels & activities YOU KNOW intimately, places in YOUR town or where you visit often enough to never check reviews, you will be VERY surprised just how misaligned the reviews are with the truth.

For example, what has arguably been Dublins finest hotel for 140 years... is ranked #40 something, on TA. Being out ranked by utter dives of B&B's, even taking cost in to account, there is no justification for it. Its FULL of misinformation (even the most basic things).

One thing I do check... for an A*hole of a manager, nothing shows how unprofessional a hotel can be run more, than a manager who argues with an unhappy guest publicly.

& Some Asian countries clearly ahem* "edit reviews"

Well, you have to learn how to read & filter the bias on Tripadvisor, just like the propaganda in the mainstream media.

Once you know what's wrong, you can still get some info out of them.

Then limit the list to "luxury" hotels.
If that hotel still doesn't appear on top, check if comments are "arrogant" or "expensive" => clear indicator that this is MY type of hotel !!! (and not for the hoi polloi)

Agree

I'm with you on this point. During the course of the past year I've been spending a lot of time in Nanning where ta's coverage was and is awful. That said it was an invaluable resource to me early on because it gave me the direction needed to start poking around in the right places. In other words even though the top rated restaurants are rubbish the tend to be located near nicer restaurants. Furthermore about three months in I started receiving useful tips from other members.