Right; many of us consider it merely unreliable. But only because it's laughably so.

Come on, that's absurd hyperbole. TripAdvisor is subverted somewhat by (A) over-the-top reviews from crazy travelers complaining about trivia; (B) some apparently fake rave reviews planted by hotels or restaurants; and (C) some unfortunate managerial decisions to edit review flow, apparently in favor of client businesses.

So you take it with a big grain of salt, that's all.

Fascinating how some are offended when a for-profit business prioritizes its business interests. :) What do you expect? Selfless altruism?

There is one thing I use from Trip Advisor and that is some information about ancillary items related to a specific hotel, usually location based.

Looking through reviews, there are some gems about easiest way to reach public transport, routes to get to major attractions, location of nearby grocery store or restaurants, and so on.

I never consider their reviews or ratings when deciding where to book a room. FT is a much better resource for that, especially as I typically keep to rooms in a certain hotel loyalty program.

If you ever were to find yourself in a hellish place like Nanning, and someone like me hand't bothered to create a thread about it here, you'd face an uphill battle on the eating front without TA or dianping.

User ratings are inherently biased toward the cohort that stays at that hotel.

I'll give you an example, a buddy of mine hates the restaurant PF Changs. He said, there should be a way to filter out ratings and reviews for anybody that has given PF Changs 5-stars. Obviously they have different tastes than he does.

That's why I like Rotten Tomatoes. They give you the critics score and the audience score. The audience of mostly teens might love the new Transformers movie and thus it gets a high rating. I know I would HATE IT.

One that makes TripAdvisor stands out is there's a systematic and organized intimidation tactics attacking people who write bad reviews about a business. When I looked a little deeper I found out that TA was all about promoting business and they do this at the expense of truth and consumer protection. They practice censorship as well. In fact TA is a bit too evil for me.

Yes, in fact, there are companies that get contracts from big businesses to write fake reviews to promote those businesses.

I always read TA reviews backward: I start with the bad ones and work my way up to the good ones. You can pretty much tell whether a reviewer is being measured and reasonable or is just a jerk; I figure if I read a trivial complaint and think, "That's the WORST you have to say about this place?" I can discount it pretty quickly.

Meh. I wrote it before and I'll write it again - if readers simply look at the raw ratings, that's a rookie mistake. One has to review the comments and find the pattern(s). One off comments about an elevator working or "the room had a thermostat" are inconsequential unless numerous people make the same point AND there is some relevance to that point (i.e., no other hotel in the area has a working elevator or thermostats).

I guess if folks are looking for a "lowest common denominator" tool, yeah, you could say TA is unreliable. But I think if you read and find patterns to the ratings and comments and correlate them to the rater's volume of comments and travel experience, it's a fairly useful and reliable tool.

Cross posting is against the FT terms of service, jetdreamer.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/dinin...visor-com.html

Not surprising, chains have lots of resources at their disposal that independent, locally run hotels do not.

Perspective:

For example, for my mom, who going to McDonald's is a treat, if she goes to a PF Chang's then she would consider that to be five star treat.

For my father in law, who was on an expense account most of his adult working career, he can find something wrong with the angle of the napkin and how it was placed on his lap in a Michelin starred restaurant.

Key is to look at many reviews and get a gist of the place.

If you were to use TA as your SOLE source of information then you will find them unreliable but use them as a source, it can be very useful.

Also, I am mid/top elite tier at the hotels I stay at.

If it is a leisure stay, I always email hotel and mention that I am staying due to a special celebration or straight out request an upgrade. Almost all the time I get an upgrade, amenity, etc, etc - the royal treatment.

So my experience at that specific hotel is very different from the expedia/OTA folks who paid minimum rate and have high expectations.

Anecdote - I was checking out from hotel that gave me a suite, high floor, corner room upgrade plus breakfast from a cheap advance rate. I overheard an orbitz customer complaining from an alley facing room, being woken up by garbage truck at 6am.

I do use trip advisor for photos, that is about it. I use flyertalk for hotel reviews.

Where on Flyertalk can you find reviews of non-cookie-cutter western chain hotel reviews?

How so? What are the intimidation tactics?