If anybody here still maintains the fiction that TripAdvisor is 'reliable', here is an article from Business Insider that might change your opinion:

One marketer cracked the hotel review system and consistently dominates TripAdvisor ratings. Her strategy can help you crush your next job interview — or optimize your business.

Years ago, I was looking for a hotel in Denver and when I saw that a Residence Inn was the top ranked property, it was clear that my criteria were not synced with a majority of reviewers on TA.
But I disregard the rankings and read the reviews - after having tentatively chosen a property. I'm looking for specific information and use the filters to guide me to reviews that mention the things I'm interested in getting information about. I've also found that bad reviews are often dropped after a bad, but obviously anecdotal, experience.
Along with other inputs, and a lot of experience (leading me understand and correctly interpret exactly the kind of reviewing tricks discussed in the cited article), I've used TA to good advantage and haven't ended up in a dud hotel in ages.

I clicked through the link expecting, from your description, an article about how someone has figured out how to cheat or manipulate ratings on TripAdvisor. I was surprised to find what's actually a very good read about how hotels can genuinely improve customer satisfaction. Wrong link? :confused:

Same here, and while that's part of it, it also touches on the subtle social manipulation at work. Honestly, I'm not a very outgoing person, so if any hotel staff ambushed me like that, I'd probably turn and run.

Has anyone noticed that you can no longer read the reviews on TripAdvisor. Hotel pages just show pictures and FAQs, but I can't seem to ever pull up user reviews anymore. Has something changed? Is it members only now?

You can still view them, you just have to scroll down further.

Not on any of the three dozen hotel pages I am looking at, is there something you have to click? There isn't even a place to see reviews. I have looked on three browsers and my phone.

There is no trick to it. I just went and checked to make sure nothing has changed and it hasn't. Go to any hotel page and just keep scrolling down until the reviews show up on the left side. You do have to scroll past some ads for other hotels in the area that can make it seem like the hotel information has ended but it hasn't, just keep scrolling down.

I gave up on TA for years as far as hotel reviews go.

Is TA search terrible? Maybe they're presenting the hotels that pay now?
I've had a tough time finding things in the app. If I search for the exact same text (with "TripAdvisor") in google, it comes right up.

I find Booking.com to be much more reliable and international for reviews.

Search on the website is pretty bad. There's a horrible signal to noise ratio especially when you're trying to look at Attractions. Also now the website and app default to ranking by "Traveler Favorites" instead of "Traveler Ranked" which makes a huge difference. I'm always very careful to make sure I'm looking at the right one.

That doesn't sound right. Are you sure it doesn't default to "TripAdvisor Favorites"? :)

How reliable are hotel reviews on TripAdvisor?
 

Hi everyone. As I mentioned in earlier threads here on these forums, I'm traveling to France, Germany, and Holland in two months.

For this trip, I'm acting as my own travel agent for the first time. Last week, I booked all of my flights and train tickets.

Now I'm in the process of making hotel reservations.

Lately, I've gotten into the habit of visiting TripAdvisor and reading up on tourists' reviews of hotels that I'm looking into.

This is because I was interested in a few Mercure properties in Paris, and I had second thoughts after being warned of recent subpar reviews of these properties on TripAdvisor.

How reliable and useful are hotel reviews on TripAdvisor when you're booking your accommodations?

Is it advisable to exclusively consider hotels that have thousands upon thousands of reviews?

There really isn't much for alternatives, but I've found TA to be reasonably reliable for researching hotels in other countries.
I've had 4-dot hotels that were great. I've had 4-dot hotels that were just OK. I've only ever had one hotel that got good marks, but was actually pretty bad.