Tripadvisor is no longer reliable
 

I've been posting reviews on Tripadvisor.com since 2003, and have been reading reviews there even longer. I still find reviews at Tripadvisor to be more useful than on any other site I've used. BUT the reliability of the site's reviews has plummeted in the past couple of years or so.

It used to be that user-generated ranking of hotels in a given area matched reasonably well with how I would rank the hotels. The 5-star places I'd stayed at and had excellent experiences with would occupy the top of the Tripadvisor ranks. Nowadays, for some locations there's a good chance you will find some dinky 2- or 3-star place with adequate but not exceptional customer service rated as the number one hotel rather than a 4- or 5-star hotel that has good or excellent service in the same area.

Part of the problem seems to be that hotel owners and managers now know about Tripadvisor and try to game the system by writing favorable reviews. It used to be easy to identify those reviews because many tripadvisor review writers had written previous reviews for other places while the insiders tended to just have one or a handful of reviews. However, now the vast majority of Tripadvisor reviews seem to be contributed by single-review reviewers. I think this is due at least partly to Tripadvisor having decided to merge reviews from other sites into the Tripadvisor reviews collection.

As a result, I find myself more and more often using Tripadvisor primarily for the photos posted by reviewers rather than for the written reviews.

Still, once I've narrowed down the hotel choices to just one to three places, I will read all of the reviews in the past year or so, depending on the number of reviews per hotel, to get a general idea of what kind of experience the hotel's customers have been reporting, discounting but not completely ignoring any reviews submitted by reviewers who have posted fewer than a half-dozen or so reviews to the site.

I disagree with some of your post. I think the reason that tripadvisor ratings do not correlate with star ratings is primarily due to the 'value for money' issue combined with reviews from infrequent travelers rather than hotels 'gaming the system'.

As more people review for tripadvisor, you get people with less traveling experience doing the reviewing. These reviewers are far more likely to rate on the extremes rather than the middle. If they have only stayed in 10 hotels in their life, the best one will get a top rating, whether or not, it really would rate that if they had stayed in 100 hotels or more. Equally, they will really punish the hotel which failed to satisfy them in some way, even if in the grand scheme of things the failure was relatively minor.

When I review, I apply the value for money proposition. So, if a five-star hotel charging, multiple several 100€'s a night, I expect the service to be spot on - no inconsistencies in the service. If I get a mix of four- and five-star service, I will rate the hotel much lower, than a 90€ three-star hotel where I get a mix of three get a mix of three- and four- star service.

As a user of tripadvisor, I have always found the comparative rankings to be relatively useless, because too often they compare apples to oranges. How do you compare a high-end property which doesn't quite meet expectations, with a one-star property which completely exceeds them?

I find it best to read the individual reviews to see what people found good and bad about the hotels, and think about how I would react to those same experiences. I also take one-time reviews with a grain of salt, not so much because they could be shills for the hotel (although that possibility does exist), but also because the reviewer does not demonstrate that they have the experience necessary to properly review a hotel. One-time reviews are often from people who have had a once-in-a-lifetime good or bad experience and are often not representative of a property.

That said, if a hotel has a lot of bad reviews, I take it seriously, no matter how many reviews each reviewer has written.

There's also the issue of Hotel Class (stars) versus Traveler Rating (circles). The Hotel Class data is provided by a third party and does not include all of the hotels on the site. So, for example, if you are looking at hotels in Playa del Carmen there are 186 properties listed. However, only 102 of them have been given a star rating. If you limit by Hotel Class, you may be missing out on a property that fits your criteria simply because it hasn't been given a star rating yet.

I'm still a huge fan of the site and use it regularly, but it can take some serious sleuthing to find what I need.

^

TripAdvisor is still very reliable you actually have to read the reviews to make a consensus. Don't just go by the :-: ratings.

I really dont use the rankings listed on TripAdvisor but believe the reviews and info is extremely valuable when making a decission on where to stay. I just look at the individual reviews and judge for myself who has valid complaints etc. I post a lot on TripAdvisor and find it the best site out there for getting info on a property. I think they are doing a better job these days of trying to make sure fake reviews are not posted but it is obviously difficult to police.

As far as Tripadvisor no longer being reliable. It has never been 100% reliable and never will be as it is end user generated content. Garbage in, garbage out. Nothing stopping someone from giving a 1 star review to a great hotel because they didnt take the mayo off their burger like they ask. Nothing stopping someone from giving a 1 start property 5 stars because they had indoor plumbing.

I just read the reviews and go from there. I have never agreed with their rankings and never really understood exactly how they derived them.

I agree and also focus primarily on the written reviews, particularly for negative (or perceived negative) comments. When multiple people complain about a noise or location, at least I feel I am going in with my eyes open. Often times, it is a questions of expectation management. I was recently researching a trip to Lapland for Christmas with the kids and you could tell a number of people having done day-trips from the UK were terribly disappointed, yet had they read the reviews (generically) before hand, they may have actually even enjoyed the trips.

I also find TripAdvisor useful but do not rely on it exclusively. I first look for the negative reviews to see if management has responded. If a hotel has just a few reviews, I will also look at other sites to get information. Lately, I have also started checking bedbugregistry.com, since the bedbug problem has become serious.

I couldn't agree more. That's why I rated the Ibis City Centre Casablanca higher than the Sheraton a few steps away.

I read all the reviews, or at least the ones that are less than 1-2 years old*-as in some cases the hotel has been refurbished lately- and then decide what's important for me (location, cleanliness, internet, health club, etc) and what's not so relevant (unsmiling staff, noisy guests in the corridor...).

*PS: Watch out: after the oldest English review come the newest ones in other languages; so it's useful to check them out as well... if you know the language, of course.

I also consider Tripadvisor very, very helpful. The only thing that I always crack a smile about is that many of the reviewers are apparently a lot more fussy than I am. I realize that there are some hotels out there that have huge problems... but by and large, it amazes me what small things people complain about on that site. It's almost like the airlines complaints you find on FT ;-)

I find TripAdvisor mediocre in terms of usefulness.

I pay no attention as to what ranks in the top 10 hotels as FF traveling habits seem to vary significantly from the "mom & pop" travelers.

However, as others have mentioned, the nuggets are in the reviews themselves, after you ignore the 1-2 liners that have next to useless info.

I then back it up with searching reviews on FT, which are much more targeted to experiences with folks with higher tiers in hotel programs.

My general rule of thumb with Trip Advisor is to ignore the top 20% and bottom 20% of reviews. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.

Mind you, reading TA reviews can be hilarious. Some people just find the most trivial things to complain about.

We stayed at a less than stellar resort on Grand Bahama Island a few years ago and I reviewed it on TA. My wife and I will check out the reviews of this place sometimes. The reviews written by the staff are so clear and funny. It makes for an enjoyable experience to read them.

everyone expects a different thing, all I want is clean and no street noise,

others complain if the soap is the wrong color :)

So if you are asking about someplace its good to know if you area backpacker , a businessman, a family etc,

They all expect something different !

RB

Yes-reading them is the key. I've got 89 reviews posted and am in a hotel tonight- have already taken a pic of the room and I'm about to check out the Fitness Center and pool. My reviews are detailed enough that you know if the things that I liked/didn't like matter to you. TA hasn't steered us wrong in selecting hotels but that's because I go beyond the numerical ranking.

I am much like you. Actually I am a Destination Expert in one of the forums on TA and the forums are great. But reviews of many hotels are manipulated. In fact, TA is in the process of being sued by hoteliers in both the UK and US because of this.

And I ignore most reviews by posters with just 1-3 contributions. Many, though not all, of these, are bogus.

It is a known fact that some hotels solicit reviews from guests. So you get an influx of reviews from some hole-in-the-wall new property and it becomes a #1 or #2 of 300 hotels.

Same with attractions. Segway tour in Anchorage is the #1 attraction? And the antique car museum the #1 attraction in Fairbanks? You can readily see how absurd that is.

TA is a business. They command huge advertising revenue by the "hits" they get. They don't do all they can to weed out the fake reviews. They also don't stand up to defend posters of controversial reviews. One reviewer of a hotel in the UK mentioned that the hotel "lost" their reservation and it was fully booked up for their wedding and reception. The hotel bullied them into removing the review (threat of a lawsuit) even though the review was accurate and only had facts. TA did nothing to stand by to defend the reviewer. They took the easy way out and just removed the review at the request of the poster. This is all documented on the Help Us Make Trip Advisor Better forum.

As with anything, caveat emptor. TA is a tool and nothing more.

Note that I am bemoaning the change in reliability. Tripadvisor was never perfect, but it used to be more useful for my purposes. I think that as the number of reviewers and sources of reviews have grown, the quality of reviews has declined. The percentage of reviews generated by less-discerning first-time travelers seems to have exploded.

I review in the same way as you. My complaint is not that 3-star hotels are being rated more highly than 5-star hotels. It's that 3-star hotels with half-assed service charging rates typical for their class are being rated more highly than 5-star hotels with top-notch service charging rates typical or even low for their class.

Or even take the photos. It used to be that when reviewer-submitted photos first began to be posted, almost all the photos were of the hotels themselves. Now it's very common to find photos of local attractions that have nothing to do with the hotel. I only want to see a photo of the Eiffel Tower on a review about a Paris hotel if that photo shows the view of the tower from one of the hotel rooms! And I don't want to see photos showing how cute someone's kids are! Just show the hotel!

I find TA useful, but like many here, by reading the comments rather than focusing on the stars/ranking. If there are enough reviews, you can get a good sense of the place.

It's not all about the stars! I have a number of reviews to post up around Xmas, but for me it's the experience in the hotel vs. the price.

On my last big trip the Ibis in Wellington stood out as a great (4*) hotel, thought it only has a 2* rating. It's clean, the showers are good, bed comfy. The food is fine, it's in a good location and the staff are great.

I always read the "poor" reviews for a good laugh - sometimes they are useful, othertimes........

I agree with you 100% here. I have written many reviews for TA and always keep the value for money proposition in mind when I write the review. I also think many of the reviews are really about expectations. People book at three-star hotel and then judge it on five-star standards. You can read this all the time when people write that a particular hotel did not have a bellman or free breakfast when neither amenity is listed on the hotel website or offered at the hotel.

I would like to see TA put hotels for large cities into three different categories: luxury, mid-class, and budget. I feel this would make sifting through hundreds of hotels (2000+ for Paris!) more manageable.

You can do that now at TA by using the hotel class function (1-5 stars). You can also sort by price, limit the price per night or choose B&B or Specialty Lodging instead of hotels. In short, not that hard to zero in on what your looking for.

I find TA useful but no doubt it is plagued by fake reviews that alter the rankings. And whether or not it's conscious or not I am sure the rankings impact people's perceptions. Personally when I see a hotel high in the ranking and then see dozens of reviews from people with only one contribution, I tend to skip it. I wonder if TA have started to include number of contributions in the ranking algorithm? Someone giving top marks who has already contributed a hundred reviews is more meaningful than a first time poster.

Once I have homed in on a the properties in a region I then tend to cross references with forums like TA's own and here.

I find TA reviews most useful for the reporting of non-subjective, factual information. If an airport-area hotel has no free shuttle in an area where all of its competitors offer free shuttles, that's important information. Or if a city hotel has an on-property or neighboring nightclub "featuring" loud music until 03:00 every night (Andaz San Diego anyone?), that's also good to know beforehand. Same with lack of workout facilities, business center, etc for those who need those amenities.

The usefulness/reliability factor is reduced once subjectivity enters the picture. One can pluck some useful information from these parts of the reviews, but too many of the self-styled "frequest business travelers" are nothing of the sort - the significant majority of reviews reflect relative inexperience in staying in hotels with any real frequency.

I do find the TA fora useful - one example was when I had problems buying a Renfe online ticket: the TA forum on Spanish rail had the most accurate, clear;y-written explanation of the issues faced by those trying to use U.S. based credit cards on the Renfe website. ^

I agree that reporting of factual things like whether part of the hotel is under construction or whether there is a loud nightclub on the premises are useful bits of info that sometimes you won't find anywhere else than tripadvisor.

Unfortunately, tripadvisor just pulls a lot of the other info that ought to be requisite parts of each hotel's profile (hotel shuttle, resort fees, internet access in rooms, etc) from other sites like expedia. In fact, one of the weakest features of tripadvisor is the map feature -- the maps are too small, they are not sufficiently detailed, and they are littered with ads for other properties as the default. (The hotels.com site, as one example, has much more useful maps than tripadvisor. Kayak's maps, on the other hand, are a very mixed bag because a lot of the mapping information is just plain wrong.) If it weren't for these complaints, I'd view the decline in the usefulness of the other aspects of tripadvisor more favorably.

I really wish there were a site which consistently listed all the basic factual data about each hotel in a uniform matter:
- size in square meters (or feet) of each class of rooms
- whether internet access is available in rooms (all rooms or just certain rooms)
- whether the internet access requires a separate fee (and what that fee is, if you are pricing rooms)
- whether there is a fitness room on premises
etc

I'd also like to see an industry-wide standard of hotels posting on their websites when construction in or adjacent to the hotel is planned or underway. Hotels that do not have websites, or smaller hotels that are not able to update their websites frequently enough to incorporate this information, should notify anyone who is booking a hotel of this information at the time the booking is made and allow the guests to cancel their reservations at the time of booking due to the construction.

It's not just the number of reviews that can reveal a shill, it's also the marketing-like language employed. Not a few reviews are worded like the below. No real reviewer would write like this.

"I enjoyed the crisp, 150-thread count, imported Scandanavian comforter. The tasteful rosewood desk and the authentic Herman Miller chair complemented the well-stocked, conveniently located mini-bar."

Oh, puh-leeze!

I totally disagree. I find the key to Tripadvisor is to look for consistency in the reviews. I throw out the one-off review raving about a property or slamming it when all of the other reviews state the opposite opinion. But if numerous reviews note poor housekeeping, lousy poolside service, a disinterested front desk staff, etc., I'll heed the warning.

As another poster said, you've got to READ the reviews, not just trust the star rating.

Seriously, they've gotta crack down on bogus ratings of attractions. In pretty every major city it's something like a bike tour. I completely ignore the attractions section, but the hotel reviews are a bit more helpful (if, as others said, you know the ignore the extremes). I put hotel reviews pretty regularly.

Visiting a foreign city, I am not about to read 25+ reviews x 150 hotels = nearly 4,000 reviews (could be much worse numbers for large cities).

The rankings used to be helpful in narrowing down which hotels' reviews to read. The rankings are based on reviewers' choices, which presumably are a distillation of the impressions described in their narrative reviews.

I usually pick a few hotels based on price/location/etc., then look at tripadvisor's reviews. Rarely is the number 1 hotel the best for me.

I usually check Tripadvisor before I book a hotel and agree with a previous poster to look for consistency in te reviews. I find many reviews off the mark when I compare with my own experiences in certain hotels so I am not that interested in specific very negative or positive reviews. But many reviews for a hotel pointing to a certain drawback do give me someting to hold onto.

I've learned a couple of things from this discussion.

I was about to write that one of the annoying things about tripadvisor's policies is that they discourage including any discussion of hotel room prices in reviews, but I just took a look at the current review guidelines, and I don't see any prohibition there against mentioning prices. I could have sworn that there used to be a rule prohibiting price discussions, but either my memory is just wrong or they have changed that policy. If I am right that that used to be one of their rules, the rule made it hard to compare reviews over time since so many reviewers take price into consideration when judging their experience yet prices change over time.

The other thing I've learned is that tripadvisor does not prohibit business owners from asking guests/customers to write reviews (not that there's much that tripadvisor could do to prevent this from happening if they did have such a rule). There FAQs actually says owners can ask guests/customers to write reviews.

I don't see anything wrong with this, as someone who had a negative experience will not do a business a favor.

I actually did this for a guest house in Chiang Mai. They had just opened and I was one of the first guests. When I left I told them that it was a great place and wished them well. They mentioned that it would be helpful to write a review on TA. I did so because they were a nice family that had just invested a lot in their guest house and it was great value for the price. Can't see any harm in that.

I'm not sure why you have to read about 150 hotels. You are unable to narrow your search based on location, other recommendations, price, etc.? I've never had to read reviews on more than a handful of properties in a city that's new to me. I suspect you're not exactly using all of the resources available to you.

I always read them and discard the ones with a context of "had to wait 5 minutes in line" or "we asked for our party of 250 to have the bill split on 500 different credit cards and 3 gift cards and they wouldn't help us"....

Tripadvisor.de does not publish bad Reviews from some Hotels?
 

Hello

As we had a very bad Experience in a Hotel in Bulgaria (Rainbow, Sunny Beach), we wrote a accordingly Review about that Hotel.
We did not wrote anything rude, just explained about the un-cleanless and very unfriendly Staff.

Also some of our friends, who had the same Experience few Weeks ago, and wrote a Review, didnt got the Publishing of their Experience.

So, is here anyone, who could tell us, why they do not publish the Bad entries?

(So from now on, we are little bit carefully with Tripadvisor, because if the do not publish the True of some Hotels, why i should look to their Page, if i want have a fair information about my Hotels i want to inform me?)

maybe you're confusing TA with Priceline or Hotwire, where discussion of prices and /or amenities will keep your review from being published.

Since you only have 1 post on FT, I am ignoring you. :D

Just kidding. I've read this complaint before, but since I've written 50-100 reviews on TA and everyone's been published, I can't give you an answer. I did have one replaced, which was a shame. I returned to a favorite hotel in Paris 3 years later and wanted to update my original review. They published it, but deleted the original.

I'm one who reads the reviews and looks for certain things. If one reviewer mentions a cleanliness issue, I don't book. Better safe than sorry.

One thing I'm taking from this thread is the need to identify the room number when I have an issue with the room. Sometimes it's just one room, floor, or side of the building that gives offense.

And yes, I read reviews for entertainment value as well.

I've written some (very) honest reviews of bad experiences and I've never had any of them removed from tripadvisor. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, though.

I usually add the room number, especially if we had a particularly nice view, but I realized it's also one more data point they could use to identify me if they wanted to track me down (the city in my profile and the month of visit are others). Fortunately I've never had to write a review thoroughly trashing a place. Maybe it's because I use TA to pick hotels in the first place!

Actually, I am still usually it very often and I didn't have a chance to adds more cities where I've visited. I have more than 200 cities were there in Florida and etc.

It's certainly possible I am confusing tripadvisor with another site, but unlikely to be priceline or hotwire, as I've never booked with hotwire, and I don't recall trying to write reviews on priceline.