Likewise I recently wrote a review on TripAdvisor about a hotel lobby cafe. It was removed initially. Then reinstated. Then moved away from the hotel itself to the hotel restaurant (not where we were) after the general manager had replied to a few other reviews.

All without any action on my part.

I also noticed other negative reviews had been completely removed.

A Google search indicates that this is common and there has been newspaper reporting that TripAdvisor is less than reliable.

In addition I:

1. Disregard one post reviews.
2. Disregard multiple reviews by one reviewer that rate a single chain with rave positive or negative reviews. They're either hotel staff or some very disgruntled traveler.
3. Spread the ranking because the "statistics" are not reliable. So a hotel in the ranked 5th would probably be nearly as good as a hotel ranked 1st.
4. One I learnt recently: check if a whole set of negative reviews have been "buried" in one of the hotel's other venues on site e.g. poor reviews about a hotel lobby cafe are moved to the hotel restaurant to enhance the overall rating.

Are there any additional strategies for getting the best information? Thanks.

I've found that it's quite helpful for hotels. With the exception of a few places, Flyertalk can have little to no information on a surprising amount of hotels, even among the big chains. I tend to focus on the 2-4 star reviews and 5 star reviews by Top Contributors only.

When I'm looking at dining it's one of several websites (UrbanSpoon, Yelp, Google) I'm using to determine how a place might be. I also write for them, I have 109 reviews I believe.

I use it mainly for the forums. I'll enter "city name forum" in the search bar and very often get information that I would not otherwise have

its not that one cannot find specific information or photos on tripadvisor, its that 99% of tripadvisor is completely worthless. (while i am exaggerating slightly, it REALLY is not that much of exagerration.) so any research takes a lot of time, unless one is only looking at brand new hotels or the most expensive hotels. (thousands of dollars per night.)

fodors is apparently a good/common source particularly for africa for example.

I use it to help pick a place from my shortlist of, typically, 3-4 hotels per destination that I identify based on price/star rating/location.

I never put much weight on individual reviews... it's more the broad strokes that I take note of. I also find the photos people take to be quite useful just to see what the place looks like in real life. (Although I have written close to 100 hotel reviews, I confess I've never posted so much as one photo mainly due to the PITA factor)

I've found it helpful for finding restaurants in cities where I don't know much. When I was going to be in Miami last month, I went to the Miami Beach restaurants, started at #1 and worked my way down until I found one that looked good for me. I've had good luck with this. I used to use iDine but they have too few restaurants now.

I use it for hotels and so far have not had any difficulties with the properties I have chosen based on the reviews. I do note the number of reviews and if there are negative ones I read them and consider if they are a single poster or they have reviewed other places. If they have I will look at their other reviews. I have found some folks that are just hard to please so I just ignore their posts. I have posted reviews on TA as well. I actually negatively reviewed a hotel I did not stay at but was subject to their lack of awareness of their neighbors. The review clearly stated I did not stay there but was negatively influenced by the property. That review is still in place. I also search for reviews of that hotel on other sites as a cross reference.

I see the Yelp/TripAdvisor pairing recurring. I definitely don't see as many/as relevant hotel reviews on Yelp, but I've also heard that many TA reviews are fake. Is there another service that is better out there for authentic opinions?

I read the travel forums and have found great info and ideas. In 2010 I found a hotel in Paris on the forums and will return this November to the same hotel.

i use it to find restaurants in the area and so far found some great seafood restaurants in cape may and wildwood this past weekend.

I just started writing my reviews of hotels on TripAdvisor. Though while researching a hotel stay in DFW (Hyatt House). TripAdvisor had good information, but when I looked on Yelp. It was more "real" reviews. Someone had mentioned there was a cockroach in their room.

Read nothing like that on TripAdvisor. When it came I departed my room early in the morning... Sure enough right outside my door was a cockroach.

Yesterday when I looked at my TA profile I had 31 helpful votes, today I had 43. That seemed odd so I looked back through my reviews. One I gave to a dessert place in Cary last year overnight got 12 helpful votes. So I looked at their other reviews, all the positive reviews have 8-12 helpful votes, all the negative ones have zero. Classy, Coffee and Crepes :rolleyes:

I feel the same goes with yelp, all of the places I like have bad reviews, I put a positive one in for it and get nothing, or it pushed out of the way. :confused::confused::confused:

I have found the TA UI to be pitiful. Searching is a pain, and It hasnt worked correctly on some browsers. On top of that, I feel alot of the reviews are from clueless people :rolleyes: I dont want to see most touristy things in a city thank you....

I'd say TA is as reliable as any compilation of random strangers' opinions is likely to be. I use it frequently but not to be taken as gospel truth, just as one resource to aid in researching and deciding.

Reviews with plenty of pictures are ideal, and really the photos are one of the big things that I find helpful. That way I can see the rooms and property in something other than hotel-produced marketing photos...this alone has made it worthwhile for me on several occasions.

It's hard to know to what extent the reviewer's expectations and perspective really match up with your own, though sometimes you can pick that up from how they word the writeup. I do try and look for any major trends in reviews - e.g., lots of people over time complain about poor housekeeping service.

Sometimes info about nearby transit, attractions, neighborhood quality, and such, can be more useful than the property review itself. A big turnoff for me is seeing the Management arguing in an emotional and unprofessional way with their response to a negative review.

I wish something could be done about the obvious fake reviews, realizing you'll never 100% clean that up.

And then you have the "helpful" abuse...like with CMK10's example, maybe the system shouldn't allow more than X number of votes within a certain time period.