Every time I book a hotel, I check the reviews and user ratings on TripAdvisor.com.

I found the reviews & ratings posted by members to be contradictory. Some describe the rooms and horrid while others said it was decent, etc.

I'm curious and I post this question to anyone who have worked in the hotel industry or know someone who does, do guests get different rooms and treatment based on where and how they book the reservations?

I mean, if you booked the reservations using a small or budget agency/website, will you get the worst rooms?

Comments? Thoughts?

That is an intersting question, but surely a discounted room rate would be expected to be the lower-level rooms in the hotel. Why would you give the best rooms to people paying the cheapeast rates? However, it seems like you are asking about agencies, and that question regarding preferences for travel agencies I think can only make sense a lot for very large travel agencies that do a lot of bookings and for large hotels that thus have a lot of rooms and experience with such agencies.

Aside from that, I wouldn't expect everyone to have the same opinions about the quality of a room, even if it were identical. People have different reference points, experiences, and ideas of value.

I think the answer is more a matter of different people's tastes and opinions. It takes a lot of reading between the lines to interpret general comments about hotels.

When someone says something like "it was fine and we didn't stay in the room much anyway" I read that as "WHAT A HELLHOLE THIS WAS."

When someone says it was clean and that's about all they say, then I can usually assume that is all -- the place was probably not attractive or tasteful and possibly very worn. I would assume any place is clean unless its not being so was made to be a big issue. When cleanliness is the only thing someone can comment on, I take it as a big warning sign.

But as to your question about which rooms people get booked in, yes it can make a difference. I remember booking a hotel in Positano and specifically requesting one of the "special" tower rooms. On the phone the guy even told me that mine was the FIRST reservation for that time. But when we arrived very early in the day, they put us in an out of the way room. I went by the tower rooms and even saw two empty and being cleaned, so returned to request them again. I was finally told they were promised to people who had booked through a very special "agency" which booked there a lot.

And despite what others say, we got the worst room in the New York Times Square Hilton when we booked for just one night on Priceline. When I returned to the desk and complained I was told clearly "well, you are only here one night and you DID book at a big discount through Priceline." I'm not saying that is the norm, but it did happen to us.

Here's another way to look at it.

Suppose for a minute that I'm the reservations manager on duty at a wonderful big hotel.
The hotel is fully booked today and it is now late afternoon with only two rooms still available and two reservations which have not yet appeared.
One room is the small one over the parking garage with only a tiny window and is next to the elevators which kind of vibrate the walls.
The other room is on the top floor with a lovely view of the sea.
One remaining reservation booked three months ago requesting a sea view room. They paid the full price of $425 a night for their reservation.
The other remaining reservation came through yesterday from a discounter. The people are getting the room for $150.

Decisions, decisions. How on earth will I decide who gets which room?

Personally, I take Trip Advisor with a very large grain of salt. How can one tell if it is an unbiased review? There is no policing on the site, so a hotel or friend of the hotel can conceivably plant good reviews, and conversely somebody with an axe to gring can plant poor reviews. In addition, some say the majority of internet users who actually take the time to post a review have a negative bias as they are more motivated to actually post.

Trip Advisor has it's place, but when you are down to the nitty gritty of choosing a hotel, speak with friends, listen to members of this forum, read the travel section of your newspaper, buy Fodors, Frommers, Insight guides, etc.

We honeymooned in Interlaken, Switzerland and stayed in a small, charming hotel. There was no "honeymoon suite", but we got a lovely corner room, decorated all in white, with a small balcony. I was very pleased with it.

On several days, the doors of adjacent rooms were propped open for cleaning. The decor of each room appeared to be different. Many of the rooms looked as if they hadn't been updated or freshened for 15 years or more; one room had hideous wallpaper with huge green flowers - it looked like it was put up in 1969. If I had gotten one of those rooms, my opinion of the hotel would have been quite different than my opinion given our lovely room.

I think that some of the small European hotels redecorate/refubish their rooms on an "as-needed" basis, so the decor may vary widely.

One more story: On my first trip to Europe, our "big splurge" was two nights at one of the "castle hotels" in Germany, on the Rhine. We were put in a room in the "annex" which looked like a room at a 1970s Holiday Inn. A bit later we went to the front desk and said we'd be only staying one night instead of two, because we were disappointed in the room. They moved us to an absolutely adorable room in the original building, with dormers and a terrific view of the Rhine. One hotel, two vastly different rooms.

Priceline reservations will often get you the rooms that have not been updated or are not as well located within a hotel.

I think many of the reviews on TripAdvisor reflect the huge gamut of subjective opinions about whatever is being reviewed.

If we could get everyone to agree on the meaning of terms such as "rude" and "dirty" and "small" and so forth there may be an improvement but that seems unlikely. So, I agree you have to read between the lines. And this doesn't even account for the differences in taste, etc.

As to hotels discounting rooms.

Please do not be fooled into thinking that hotel rooms end up in a discounter's inventory "by accident" because they don't.

Hotels often allot a certain number of rooms to any number of discounters to help the hotel "move" (i.e., sell) that inventory. It is certainly to the hotel's advantage to have a room sold (and often at prices far below the published tariff) than empty.

But what to do about those people who have reserved that same room at the published price? Not the greatest of public relations to "advertise" that the person next door got the room for a lot less than you did.

When the discounted room holder shows up the hotel makes the decision as to which room they get..and nobody BUT the hotel makes that decision and it is undoubtedly totally arbitrary based on whatever policy (or lack thereof)the hotel has implemented.

The one thing that is not always clear is what the reviewers expectations were....the room was small (maybe rooms are smaller in Europe), the elevator was tiny (maybe that is how they are over there)...I paid 200/300/400 a night, I would have expected...well, sometimes rooms are just more expensive, what 400 gets you here may not get you the same over there....the front counter staff were rude, unless there is repeated mention by others of this, I take this with a grain of salt, sometimes people can be a**es and they expect too much of the staff, or the staff was having a bad day...compliments I take at face value, noise, under construction, hovels for rooms, thin walls, I might take note of.

Also, there is nothing to prevent "friends" of the hotel from posting glowing reviews. So, that is why I might read them but also trust Fodorites.

I just want to comment about the TA reviews. As stated already reviews are based on personal expectations so what one person considers to be a 'nice hotel room' may turn out to be a dud to someone else. One thing I do always find it amusing when guests knowingly reserve a very cheap hotel and get an extremely uncomfortable room yet brush it off by saying 'Well, we only used the room to sleep and shower.' Those are the hotels I will try to avoid after reading comments like that. Reading comments that say bad things about management you have to not take as the truth right away as sometimes the comments are not true.

"Perfectly fine/adequate.." Sometimes these are weasel words for "I wasn't willing to pay for anything more" and that's a shame because there is certainly no need to justify your choice to a bunch of anonymous strangers. Justifying it to yourself is something different I suppose.

"We only used the room to sleep and shower..."

Figure that one out..for most people getting ready for bed, sleeping, and getting up in the morning probably constitutes 8 hours or so..that's fully one third of your day but some people will do or say just about anything to justify something.

I still say there's nothing quite as bad as "not so bad."

You can't take the reviews at face value - but need to look at other factors - what types of complaints are they (subjective: dirt? noise? size of room? tired decor? rude staff? or specifics: no elevator, bad location).

Does the reviewer seen to have a chip on his shouldar? Or have unrealistic expectations (I read one review of a 2* hotel in NYC recently and the reviewer didn;t feel it was "plush" enough - you simply don;t get "Plush" in 2* - you're lucky if you get it in 4*).

That said - yes every hotel has different types of rooms. Some have different prices (for certain views etc). Some are in the same price range - and which you get may depend on which already has a guest staying in it, what time you arrive (if you get there late you get what's left), your attitude (if you're cranky or obnoxious up front they'll give you the worst they have), and finally what you're paying. If you're on a deep discount it is likely someone paying full rate will get the better room - if there are only 2 left.

Generally if a hotel has a small number of "bad" rooms they use them only if the hotel is full - no matter how much/little you paid.

I used to run the front desk of a hotel (major U.S. chain, like Hilton). Everyday we would run the reservations list and assign rooms to the guests whose names we recognized (frequent guests) and those whose reservation showed they had a hotel member card number (and for them, those with the highest status in their membership would get suites). Also, anyone who requests a certain room or specific location of a room can be pre-reserved at the time of booking (over the phone is your best bet). Otherwise, the rooms were randomly assigned as the guests checked in. Requests at check-in would be honored to the best of our ability. But not everyone is pre-assigned depending on what they paid, etc. But if the hotel was sold out and there were x number of rooms left and x number of people left to check in, we would go ahead and assign the rest of the rooms and decide who to "walk" to another hotel based on rate paid, etc.