Tripadvisor and other travel reviews
 

I read an article re: tripadvisor
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/02/0.../07guides.html
I use it sometimes on hotel's research. Of course I am able to sift through different opnions but I never thought some of them are bogus.

oops - I see someone already posted this topic.

Have you ever been to a hotel you picked because of a review on TripAdvisor and found that it was vastly different from what the reviews said it was?

no

Not exactly... but I have stayed at hotels, then come home and posted a review on Trip Advisor about them. It's amazing to read people's vastly different reactions to the same place.

I find it interesting that TrpAdvisor makes a big point about their reviews being "unbiased" when we all know that due to everyone's differing priorities and perceptions that these are about as "biased" as a review can get.

I still maintain you have to read between the lines on some of them while others seem perfectly reasonable.

Yes I think it might be a case of the print media rubbishing the electronic media i.e. the Internet. Newspaper and printed Travel Guide reviews usually reflect the opinon of only one person and that can be a lowly journalist on "junkets" or a backpacking freelance with extreme views. I know this is not always the case, but at least on Tripadvisor, Fodors and other forums you at get many opinons. I am sure a journo on a "freebie" is no different from someone being "encouraged" to write a review regardless of how unbiased they might pretend to be.
From my experience Tripadvisor is fairly accurate and very useful travel forum and it's up to the traveller to "read between the lines" as a previous poster suggested.

You can "encourage" someone to do something, but that doesn't mean they will do it. I've had hotel staff had me a comment card to fill out to compliment their service. It goes immediately in File 13. I do compliment to managers when a staff member has been helpful - on my own.

I guess my point is this - a hotel can encourage or ask someone to post a favorable comment, but that doesn't mean that it will happen. If fact, the opposite may occur.

I'm always amazed at how people rate a reviewer's review as helpful when it's all of two lines, mostly about what a great place Paris, for example, is. Virtually nothing about the hotel.

I have learned from visiting the same properties over a span of even a short time that my opinion of a hotel can vary depending on time of year, how heavily booked the hotel is or if the management has changed in the last six months. It is uncanny what influences each of us as to whether a hotel is divine or so-so. I like to read the reviews of several books/websites and take an average of the opinions. Works pretty well. I prefer quiet hotels with an air of understated elegance. Some prefer larger convention-type hotels. That's what must be taken into consideration when reading these reviews....everyone has different preferences...just like movie reviews.

I too use Trip Advisor religiously and also happen to be the proprietor of a small riad establishment in Morocco. I'm glad that TA is trying to remove fake posts, but unfortunately they are removing legitmate reviews as well.

Recent guests of mine posted the first review of my place on TA and notified me through TA that they had done so. I never asked them to post a review! Because my riad is small and I personally run and manage it, I get to know all of my guests, spend time with and join them occasionally for meals - so its not surprising that they notified me of their review.

Nevertheless, it was removed immediately and my place was dropped to the bottom of the TA list. To add insult to injury, they have listed the average cost of a room at $30 more per night than it actually is.

Reveiws - good and bad- are helpful for hotel owners. Good ones let you know what you're doing right and bad ones let you know what areas need improvement. If really negative reviews are posted that the hotel management feels are unfair or misrepresented, TA has a way for management to post a response. That really should be sufficient unless the review is somehow blatantly bogus.

I have found trip advisor to be very helpful. I stay in an average of about 6 hotels a year (over two trips)and have been using trip advisor to check them out for a few years now and found it almost always very accurate. It helps if a hotel has at least 5 or 6 reviews. One or two that don't really agree with the others can be chalked up to an unhappy customer or a fake review but you can tell pretty easily by reading them. I have talked with hotel/B&B owners who say they don't advertise much and rely on word of mouth and tripadvisor reviews. I just started posting reviews because I get so much out of them I feel I need to give back. I do tend to believe recommendations from this forum even more.

I've found TripAdvisor to be very helpful. I also check other sites like Fodors, venere, and slowtrav, and so far have had uniformly good experiences.

I do think that these sites and the ease with which information is shared among travelers is actually resulting in overall better accomodations.

I do make a point of posting (in detail) on TripAdvisor when I return.