Last winter my partner and I visited a tropical destination. I looked in a popular site that ranks lodging thought-out the world by reader responses and travel book reviews. Out of hundreds of hotels at that location the number one hotel was very reasonable and looked cute. The rave reviews just went on and on and on. When we got there it was miles from the beach, the furniture was outdated and needing repair, the shower squirted a small stream in every direction. We were disappointed and wondered how this property could be the best out of so many. The answer, I believe, was that many of those reviews were generated in some way by the owners. What else could be the explanation? The recent thread "Al 58 di Via Cavour hotel in Rome" seems to be another example of this sort of "advertising."
This trend is not a good one, especially with the increasing popularity of travel sites and forums.

If you spend just a bit of time on Foders you can easily spot replies from frequent & sincere posters apart from advertisements or fake posts. Same with other travel BB's, maybe less so with hotel review sites.

yes it is possible that travel industry owners and operators stack the deck on forums that allow anyone to offer rants and raves. But in addition to dishonesty and self-serving behavior, there are other possible explanations:
you could have gotten one of the "bad" rooms in the hotel (every hotel has better and worse rooms); the rave reviews could have been outdated; management could have changed; or your standards are simply higher than other people's.
Proximity to the beach doesn't change, so if someone else said the hotel was very close to the beach, someone doesn't have a good sense of geography.
I can tell you that when I research hotels I glean info from many sources, and the more I read the more I'm able, I hope, to separate the wheat from the chaff.

It's hard to say, but I have never seen any travel site with a lot of posts that appeared totally bogus and written by owners. I have read some people on here complain about that a couple times, but usually it was just because someone said something different than their opinion, something that I read and thought entirely credible. I can pick out ads on Fodors immediately, they are very obvious, and I think I can on review sites, also.

In any case, I would never recommend you pick a hotel solely based on one web site and not even bother to check out its location elsewhere. It is also possible you just have different opinions than other people or priorities--such as in regard to how close something must be to the beach. I had people advise me to stay in a hotel on a Caribbean island (on Fodors) that was inland and not even in view of the beach, for example. I would not do that, because I had no interest in that, but they thought it was a great hotel because it was nice and cheaper than on the beach.

It could be a matter of date of reviews, as furniture can need repair and some forums carry reviews for several years, minimum.

I assume you're talking about Tripadvisor, and maybe resort people do different things on that forum, but I've never seen anything that unusual on all the other city areas I've read on there. It is too bad if you were mislead, but I think you have to take some responsbility for checking things out elsewhere, especially location, and you should use more than one resource. If you don't use anything but one site and base decisions on that, these things can happen.

I don't really know how they rank hotels on there, but I don't use that function and am not influenced by it.

If you look carefully at some of the "reviews" on TripAdvisor you can easily discern that they have been written by the same people, not necessarily owners either. I've usually seen it when someone really didn't like the place they stayed and are doing everything possible to ensure that the place doesn't get any more business.

Now, as to this site. To "register" all you need is a valid e-mail address and most people know how easy those are to set up, and multiple times, onservices such as Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. Would it be possible for an "owner" to post a "rave" about a particular establishment on this site, either in the form of a "trip report" or otherwise...yes, very easily done.

To answer your original question of "how this property could be the best out of so many?" Easy: opinions of what is good and what isn't vary widely and what some people feel is important about a place others couldn't care less about.

To me this point up a very fundamental "fact" about using websites such as this one...often what you read here is an opinion. Unfortunately, there are a few very, VERY well-known "Fodorites" who have the tendency to post so-called "rules" and other statements and cast them as "facts" when they are, in fact, opinions.

Savvy travel includes being able to discern these when you find them and act accordingly.

Everything about travel is an opinion really, other than facts like street address, number of rooms, average square footage, whether or not there is air conditioning, etc.

Whether the location is "close" to a metro, or whether the rooms are "small" or "charming", or if the service is rude, all those adjectives and more are opinions, whether Fodors professionals write them, or we do. But when I read 10 opinions that all mention the same faults, or the same assets, I start to pay attention. That's why as Christina said, we should review info from many sources, and this is also why the internet has exacerbated OCD travel research. I speak from experience.

Dear InMiami, i have stayed at 58 di Via Cavour in Rome.It were very lovely accomodation with Jacuzzi cabins inside the rooms, and finely furnished (free-bar included, social area, breakfast area etc!..Have you stayed here?.. look and after you can speak
www.bed-and-breakfast-rome.com