I am pleased to see this renewed interest since I first wrote about TripAdvisor censorship. Of course, this entire thread would be deleted if it was posted on the TripAdvisor forum and the TA moderators would have closed our accounts as they did mine. Thank goodness that FlyerTalk encourages frank and open discussion. As someone here commented, nothing good can ever come from censorship.

As an update, The Grand Hotel Plaza Rome continues to post fraudulent TripAdvisor reviews and my TA account is still closed because I had the audacity to comment about my awful experience at this run-down, manipulative, hotel. To rub salt in my wounds, TA continues to email me regularly reporting how many people have read my reviews (over 90,000) and asking me to submit more (how, pray tell?)

Tripadvisor is no longer reliable
 

I have posted both positive and quite negative reviews and have not had any problems with my account.

Same here.

You may have missed the point. TripAdvisor does not censor good or bad reviews. They censor any comments regarding suspected manipulation of reviews i.e. fraudulent reviews. They also censor forum postings regarding this practice of hotel reputation management and TripAdvisor's lack of enforcement.

I have been a long time member also but I get the most out of direct responses from my questions from the destination experts and from recent trip reviewers.
You're right the actual reviews are not too reliable as there was even a news report on 20/20 or some show like that where they even interviewed a person contracted to wirte fake good reviews.

I travel a lot in China and have found that some of the Tripadvisor hotel reviews there are written by members of an affiliate site called Daodao. They are written in Chinese, mostly by and for domestic travelers, but are no more reliable than the rest of the Tripadvisor family.

Not uncommon to find a string of several 5-star reviews in rapid succession that praise everything imaginable about a property, then actually stay there and be quite surprised and disappointed.

I just Googled the phrase “This post was determined to be inappropriate by the TripAdvisor community and has been removed.” and there are 1,400,000 results at the site www.tripadvisor.com
Clearly, TA is very busy censoring the views of the traveling public by deleting posts.
On the other hand, if you Google TripAdvisor fake reviews, there are over 4 million results.
Proof that censorship doesn’t work.

The first one is likely from the forum - where you get a lot of people advertising (e.g thread is "what transfer company should I use" and a user says "My transfer company XYZ travel is amazing" - it's against the T&C and is flagged inappropriate.) and trading insults with each other (just as mods here remove things).

I am too, and completely agree with your comments. I beleive i can't accurately assess hotels attributes that aren't important to me, or those I don't use..so I don't evaluate them.

I find TA helpful, and try to return the favor.

This ^ +1 and count me in. I'm an active reader on TA and hasn't written that many unpaid, unsolicited reviews on their sites, none of them censored or blocked - and wherever I can (always tried unless I rushed in late & checked out early) post & backup mine with photo documentation for fellow users curious. I'm counted by TA as their top 3% reviewers in the badge, and received absoutely zero compensation nor affiliated with those places that I've visited, stayed & eaten at, etc. - except for an appreciation gifted TA luggage tag (that's gotten a few looks at the checkin/lobby desk as I used it on my carryon.)

I do NOT bother with writing up a property when there's hundreds of updated/current review with photos, positive & negative, and neutral ones, unless I find something really out-of-bound to warrant my 2 cents. It is time consuming even while sitting at the lounge or terminal/gate waiting to board to write when I could be sipping my latte, napping or catching up on FT or whatever - or get restless cruising at 31,000 ft.

Chances are that you will see my reviews on TA as it's usually for those far away and off-the-beaten path & seldom reviewed places, and my contributions do give a fair heads-up for those planning to book a stay soon (i.e. slippery shower floor that splashed across & leaked into the carpeted floor due to poor design & leveling, emergency lightening that failed to work 18 stories up during a partial power outage) These are the ones that get the attention - and you know what, the property manager or corporate office that write/respond/acknowledge & read out to me are the ones that I truely appreciate and most likely will not cross them off on my re-visit list. It's the 5 star property that ignored and couldn't care less, and don't bother with a direct email that I will be wary of - and via TA and other means, to stay away from in the future.

Off-topic, another site that I use/write on sometimes, but fewer & fewer these days is YELP - it is clear (to me, anyway) that reviews are much easier to censor and/or their system can be tweaked by the advertised sponsors to the filtered. A local "hi-end" buffet that claimed to be among the best had 75+ reviews, with 30% filtered reviews is a clear sign that something isn't right - especially when more than 2 or 3 wrote about getting sick (GI symptoms) after eating there & management choose to ignore or not respond - playing dumb. Yours truely among those that rated this place poorly and believe me, word of mouth is just as effective and colleagues & associates of ours now all avoiding this place like a plague.

Back on TA - some of the most valuable insight while using TA are the traveler's photos - each is worth a thousand words as the old saying go, we do not transplant molds & mildrews, or broken a/c vent control or photoshop a dirty bathroom sink. If a room is truely small at 200 sq. ft. - it is small by most standards and is only "big & spacious" if you compare to our last balcony cabin on a mega cruise ship at 161 sq. ft. that sleep up to 4, barely. These resources were not available 15 or 20 years ago, except for the ones on site like travelocity, and we all know how reliable some of them were - now, one can google it up on the smartphone, iPad or tablet when away on a desktop, and quickly size it up before booking.

Faked/professional & paid reviews are out everywhere - if you look at it differently, and TA is no worst than others in cyberspace, you just have to use your common sense - whether it's yahoo, google, amazon, ebay or facebook page. Make it work for you as it's another free, useful app/tool - and if you suspect it's a fake, have a good laugh & move on ... ;) Hit the Exit button & close the browser, end of story.

I'm the same way. I generally won't bother reviewing a resort that gets like 5 reviews a day posted to TA.

It's the smaller, out of the way places that really benefit from having recent reviews. The smaller, less-visited and more obscure the locale is, the more likely I am to write a review for it.

That said, it would be nice if TA rewarded prolific reviewers... even a frigging discount coupon for a hotel once in a while on one of their endless promo e-mails would be nice!

Outpaddling: I agree that TA often shoots the messenger rather than cleaning up it's own act. And, it's not just the reviews but also in the threads. I spent 10 years as a manager for a property with a major chain, starting at the property the week it opened. There was another poster that had worked at the property when it was just raw land, for a company that couldn't afford to develop it. It was sold to the company that I went to work for and he lost his job. As a result, he has an irrational hate for the property and posts factually innaccurate information both in the threads and the reviews. He claims to be located in the town where the property is located but, in fact, lives 75 miles away---a fact that he acknowledged to me in a PM.

When I pointed out to TA that he was an admitted liar my account was also disabled. "Get the truth, then go is their motto. But it's really more like, let us lie to you, then take your chances. There are so many incorrect statements on that board that are floating around as 'truth' that it can't be trusted.

I publicly posted on the site that hotels should hold TA liable for inaccuricies that they publish or, that major chains such as the one I worked for and that spend many $'s advertising on TA should simply pull their advertising unless TA cleaned up their act. I even suggested that as still a stockholder (a very small one through a 401K) that I might write The Board of Directors of the chain I worked at and suggest that they consider that.

What, you don't feel motivated by their "badges?" :confused::p

Someone's laughing all the way to the bank bigtime for getting so many to contribute so much for free. They do seem to at least have some awareness their readers are doing a huge favor for the site with that.

Early on, Expedia actually tried sending back the first review I did for them, asking for more work. I sent 'em a scathing note saying that I was sorry the item I'd done FOR FREE wasn't meeting their needs somehow, but if they wanted something more detailed or done a certain way, maybe they should pay someone for it. I've never done anything for them again.

And then there's the all-time queen, Sheryl at biddingfortravel who'd actually suspend accounts that posted reviews but didn't originally book the hotel through her affiliate link. She couldn't see beyond just the one way of monetizing the operation, and lost untold amounts of valuable future content and data points as a result.

As for TA, they did once send me a cap, back in their early days. I treat it as a give-back-because-I've-also-benefited kind of thing. But I tend to only write when the mood strikes or there's time.

As for the deletions, they're probably being jabbed all the time by "reputation management" companies and their lawyers. It's a tough position to be in because they can't vouch totally for the accuracy of specific points that might be objected to like a newspaper or magazine could call a reporter in, debrief him and decide to stand by the story. The problem, of course, is that it can lead to excessive self-censorship.

Am sure they also have artificial intelligence algorithms that can flag certain words or pick up on patterns, like those who post only negative reviews (or, for that matter, only positive ones and without much geographic variance). Ebay, BTW, does this sort of pattern matching to catch shill bidders.

Would also second heraclitus's observation...my posts with the most helpful votes tend to be thinly reviewed budget places that show up among the lowest in price but have people needing reassurance it's not a dump.

Well, if you think about it, Simon was really the only judge on American Idol who mattered. People would listen attentively to Paula or Randy, but they wouldn't really take the encouragement to heart unless Simon concurred.

I point this out because with TA it's the accurate negative reviews that matter most. Without those the site loses its value. Positive reviews are good if they make the case and add information, but that's also part of the marketing function of the places reviewed.

It's totally understandable if a hotel feels it was treated unfairly, though if there are specific points that are just flat-out wrong, it'll probably waste no time and do a response directly disputing those. More often it seems to be stuff like "Don't stay here!" or "Dirtiest hotel I've ever been to!" or more-difficult subjective stuff like that. I won't even try to make a "dirty" case without photos.

It's a bit like the landlord-tenant back-and-forth...both groups have horror stories about the other side and there exist bad actors on both sides. I think some reviewers are hard to please or lack perspective or just aren't good at writing a fact-based case, but OTOH I think TA has led to awareness and better behavior from hotels that definitely wouldn't have happened otherwise. On balance I'd say we're better off with it than without it, but there are ongoing issues to work out.

Just a note on that, from a moderate understanding of the Google search algorithm. If you google Tripadvisor fake reviews (not in quotes), the 4 million results you get include all mentions of those words or subset of those words (which includes simply the two words Tripadvisor reviews).

Google search is not automatically a Boolean search, which would give you only sites with tripadvisor AND fake AND reviews.

If you google (in quotes) "Tripadvisor fake reviews" -- then you only get the 10,700 sites using that EXACT term, in that order.

Tripadvisor is no longer reliable
 

My TA most helpful votes are pretty equally divided between positive and negative reviews and include a hotel and a garden in Germany and a several mid level hotels ranging from boutique to chain in the USA.
I use other reviews by looking for cleanliness reports, location information, and specific information about services and equipment. I discount restaurant reviews that begin " I never eat ( blank) food but ... or reviews that say " this was our first time to ( cruise, stay in a hotel or b and b . I also tend to discount reviews that rave over a place or ones that complain about picky service details ( No bagels at breakfats? Shame !) Shills usually are obvious.

I also compare the reviews from TA with the onces at booking.com. To post a review at booking.com you need to have a reservation made through them, while at TA anyone can write, and there is no any control if you really have been there or not.

TripAdvisor
 

Hello,
do you guys use TripAdvisor? To me it is not very convenient. So I just curious maybe I'm doing something wrong. How do you use it? For hotels search or for the interesting locations?

Thank you.

As a heavy Yelp user, I've found it helpful for places that don't have Yelp, like Asia. While not as reliable, I still find it very useful to see what the popular and highly rated places are.

I use it primarily for top "must-see" attractions and restaurants. The community-based travel guides/lists are also helpful.

Hotels are good for making sure you're not getting a good deal on a slum.

I used to use it a fair amount, but now hardly at all. I find the reviews to be extremely unreliable, with a good number seemingly not motivated by helpfulness but by some form of crusade about one thing or another.

To me, and I don't stay in 5 or 6 star properties but in 3 or 4 star properties generally, and never chains if I can possibly avoid them, a good hotel is about the sum of its parts. It seems, however, that many TripAdvisor commentators have little sense of balance - unless a property has this or that, it is "the worst hotel in the world", without considering the trade-off. I'm also aware that hotels will add spoof reviews on their sites as well, so it's a complete minefield and thus quite unreliable.

And, as for restaurants, it's a total joke. So many of the reviewers wouldn't know good food if it stares them in the face, judging quality by quantity, or by how fast it's shovelled in front of them. They might mark down an Italian restaurant because it's "slow" - sorry, that's how people like it in Italy, or a Japanese restaurant because it has small portions etc.

In short, I'd use TripAdvisor only if there were no alternatives - but there almost always are options, and usually they are available in English.

I use Trip Advisor to research attractions in a given area. Since the information is so location specific and highlights not just the big attractions but also the hidden good and bad attractions, I find it very useful especially when I am stuck at a given location for a longer period of time. I can really explore.

Hotels and restaurant reviews are always taken with a grain of salt.

A long long time ago, I used to contribute regularly to TripAdvisor but found that my reviews got drowned out by the sheer number of superficial or crusade reviews that I've mostly stopped bothering. I always stop by TripAdvisor when planning but either never linger long or have to really spend time to plough through a large number of reviews to really understand what a single property is like.

The conclusion? It just takes too much time to find really useful information.

Let's move this over to Travel Tools...

I find that if you read TA too much, you'll never go anywhere. Also, the problem is that you don't know about the reviewers and their taste. Look at the #1 rated hotel in NYC...Doesn't seem likely to be the "best" does it?

The best part of TA for hotels in my opinion is the pictures submitted by users.

For hotels, someone I work with who uses TripAdvisor a lot suggested a method I have found is helpful. Select the negative reviews and evaluate the nature of complaints and see if those issues matter to you. For me, mouse in the restaurant is different than I had to wait at check in (I have seen a mouse in a SF hotel restaurant scrambling over a banquette).

Also, one can filter on type of traveler (business vs. Vacation) and that often helps identify reviews that may be more relevant. The biggest issue I find is when the reviewing population has a variety of profiles.

Thanks everybody for the responses. Very interesting to see different people experience. So my understanding that TA is a primary source of reviews for places.
I just don't like that it is so hotel oriented. Even I'm looking for attractions it always shows me hotels instead. But I'll give it another try.

Thank you.

+ 1

I've been a Destination Expert at TA for a few years - basically they "promoted" me for being helpful in a couple of the forums. I mainly use that to kill a few minutes here and there. The forums can be an interesting place. They don't have full time moderation. They rely on users to report bad posts, so what you can end up with is posters ganging up on others who's opinions they don't like. Once they get enough reports the forum software automatically does the deletion. It can be useful to get tips or questions answered on a destination, if it has enough traffic.

I will look at hotel reviews, but usually only to decide which to choose after I have already narrowed down to a short list based on loyalty programs. Same for restaurants. One negative is that their software is rather basic and smartphone app is pretty poor. If I'm on my phone and looking for a restaurant to hit, I am going to go to Yelp and Google maps first and probably not hit TA.

I use TA extensively for hotel selection. But it's important to be able to read between the lines (since some reviews are inaccurate or bogus) and to read as many reviews as possible for a hotel. But the ability to check multiple sites for the best room rates is very useful--and has saved me a lot of money over the last couple of years.

I understand that things can and do change overnight, but I'm really not fond of TripAdvisor's decision to close a thread after a certain period of time (I think it's six months). Half of the things I do a search for to plan for my trips end up at inactive TA threads, so that's where wikitravel (unfortunately) sometimes picks up the slack.

I use it for hotels and have learned how to sift out the bogus or unnaturally biased. I write hotel reviews myself, under this username. Generally I find the hotel searches very useful, especially in parts of my own country, the UK, and I distrust most hotel guides since most of them are paid advertising. Guides hardly ever inspect hotels - even Michelin is woefully inadequate in this respect and The Good Hotel Guide lacks standards. TA reviews hotels on a daily basis. And that must be good. The photos are often more helpful than words.

I NEVER use TA for restaurants. It's useless in my view. And I never use it for sightseeing as I tend to know where I want to go and what I want to see. I actually find the photo website Flickr most useful in this respect.

However, I do think it would be useful if TA had an auto-delete mechanism for all hotel reviews over, say, 5 years old and all restaurant reviews over 2 or 3 years old.

Best post of the day about TripAdvisor, particularly in terms of dining. And their purchase of SeatGuru has been a bit of a disaster - full of errors, omissions and lack of updating.

For hotels (and I have added some reports) I do a lot of reading between the lines and extrapolation, but have found some decent reviews (read the trends, as well).

I find it useful but like any information you get you have to scan it for the truth. you can sift through the good and the bad stuff.

Its useful for hotel information - I have asked the same questions on FT and not got an answer but got it promptly on TA.

By the way I am a DE but open minded about it all.

For specific destinations as a tourist TA can be very useful, which train or bus to I get and get off at what stop - where is the best street food etc

I've obviously spend too much time on TA, I'm a DE too.

TA is a good jumping off spot to find an attraction or hike or excursion. The reviews are helpful, but we really just use it as a starting off point to offer ideas for a new area and then research further with other tools.

I have been a regular contributor to Tripadvisor and my one negative review of a touring company was deemed not acceptable to be published. However I heard from the owner of the company wanting to know the reasons for my negative review. Since my post wasn't published, I would have to assume that all reviews are submitted to those who advertise heavily on Tripadvisor first and they can nix the negative reviews.
This tour company has over 400 positive reviews and I wonder how many are shills. From this experience, all reviews are not to be trusted.

I just had a post rejected by TA because they said I had violated their guidelines. This is a shock to me as I've had more than 30 posts on hotels. This one is for a touring company.However, the owner of the touring company wrote me so I think TA is being bullied by this advertiser to reject my post.
I wrote back to TA asking which specific guideline I had violated but never heard back. So beware of glowing reviews especially on items other than hotels. The negative ones get rejected.

If you can, post your review here and maybe we can discuss if anyone can see why it would be rejected.

I had one review rejected because I had links posted to regulations for renting out vacation rentals but once I removed that and just paraphrased the rules they posted it.

I still use (and post reviews) to TripAdvisor. I like to help other people out, and I hope I put enough detail in my reviews for people to know I've actually been to a property and spent some time there. I'd say I have a mix of reviews, some positive, some negative. No censorship (yet) from TripAdvisor about it.

As a rule, I look through the pictures and read associated reviews. After all, at least there's some(?) proof the person has been to the property, or at least has a photo of it. The fakes haven't quite figured this one out yet. The level of detail in someone's description is a dead giveaway. Even the Ritz-Carlton gets things wrong at times. There should be at least some things every hotelier can improve, and I try to make it a point of putting these in my reviews.

I also am annoyed with the VFM Leonardo photos all over the place. Yes, it's nice to have A photo vs. NO photo, but the VFM photos are unreliable at best.

Great example of fake reviews & fake/old VFM Leonardo photos: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Rev...nnecticut.html

Take a look at the traveler photos vs. VFM Leonardo's. VFM's photos are from a much rosier time. Also take a look at the reviewers who posted positive things about the property. All their first and only review, usually from the area no less, if you believe their profiles. I don't. I drove past the place. It's a dump.