I recently got a TA pm from someone who would pay me to post reviews that they would write. I forwarded the email to TA moderators. I have upon occasion been asked to write a review by the owner of a BnB. I tend to,write a fair number of reviews on places I stay. Writing one that was requested may or may not happen. It doesn't really effect whether I do a review or not. I will say that when I have been asked by the owner it's typical a small place where we had a fair amount of interaction with the owner.

I find the hotel reviews reliable using judgement as I review them. However I don't look to TA too much for restaurant views.

For hotels, I enter a review, whether asked or not. I only remember a hotelier discussing the matter with me once, and that wasn't really a request. It was something like: "if you have comments, please let us know directly or, if you prefer, through TA - we check our reviews there routinely".

To date, I have not been asked to enter a review of a restaurant on TA, and I have only entered restaurant reviews when I had strong opinions that I was not recording comments on a site that better suits my general needs. If I decide to begin entering restaurant reviews on TA routinely, then I will do so whether asked or not, and if I am asked, I will likely mention that in my remarks. I can't imagine that I would enter a restaurant review simply because I was asked. (But stranger things could happen!)

I'm finding this thread informative - thanks for posting the question!

I use TA in addition to other resources when I'm researching hotels and restaurants. I also like to see what are the most popular attractions and what tours are available. I look at the number of reviews posted, whether the business takes the time to respond to the negative reviews and I search for key words of interest to me in the comments. I have been asked several times to submit a review. I'm more likely to write reviews for small places or start up businesses that will benefit from more recognition. Deborah

I use ta for hotels, I read and I write hotel reviews all the time. I contact reviewers sometimes to ask specific questions, they have always gotten back to me. I can say I have booked at least 13 or 14 hotels using the reviews and feel i always got what I expected.

I however find restaurant reviews close to useless, its too subjective of a topic. Someone who normally eats KFC says a place is great, or someone who normally drops 500 dollars for dinner says the food was too basic, you just don't know.

Hotels are either basically clean or not, well located or not, etc I disregard any review that is counter to the majority of reviews( one glowing review 4 so so ones etc).

If a hotel asked me to post a review I would not find that sketchy at all, I post my honest opinions. Just because they asked you to post doens't mean you have to lie right? I can't say anyone has ever asked me though.

I write reviews for any services I feel deserve a review, whether it is a hotel, a tour, or a restaurant. Good and bad. Have never been asked to write one though.

I would venture to say most of the reviews are honest, but the blatent false ones are often reported and removed, and any reader can report them. So, if you read something that sounds false, report it. Reviews written from the hotel IP itself, get tossed automatically.

I rarely write restaurant reviews but I have when it's was really good and then only when it's in a city I don't visit that often.

I don't write reviews about my favorite places in my home town. It's very selfish, but it might just increase my wait time.

I always write reviews for hotels and sometimes for attractions.

I have never been asked to write a review. Just because you have been to some restaurant or hotel does not in any way, shape, or form guarantee that everybody else will necessarily have the same experience you did. And since there are as many different ways of evaluating an establishment as there are people who do the evaluating, implying that a review is "fake" because it doesn't jive with your own opinion seems rather foolish reasoning to me.

Sure there have been fake reviews on TA and TA tries to keep that from happening from what I have seen.

Now, if we could all come together and agree on the actual definition of some of the following "review words" perhaps things will improve:

rude
small
quaint
close
dirty
out of date
hip
chic
terrible, etc., etc.

They are real...Like this one:
http://www.tnooz.com/2012/08/31/news...might-be-fake/

I don't rely on TA nearly as much as I used to. After arriving at a few hotels/b&b's and thinking, This was #1 on Tripadvisor?
I have been surprised at times to see well recommended restaurants way down on the list on TA.

Look up your own hometown or nearby city, and see if TA agrees with what you know. I think more often it doesn't.
I've also seen resto and hotel reviews for places in Italy that have about half a dozen glowing reports, all from the local area, all having no specifics, and all using the same shallow language.
Doesn't take much to figure that one out.
I like reviews on booking.com because you can't post there unless they send you a link after your stay. I also like their pros and cons format, makes it easy to scan through them.

Some of the best meals we have had have been recommended by the hotel/B&B where we stayed, but just as many were equally as bad.
Eckscrunchy, I just look for your reports.

oops ekscrunchy. Good link to ElPais by the way.

Look up your own hometown or nearby city, and see if TA agrees with what you know. I think more often it doesn't.>>

good point, sundried. I did it with my town and the top restaurant [out of 100+] is a coffee shop, but several very good restaurants are quite a long way down the list.

ribeirasacra that was a very funny link.

I can't answer as to whether all reviews on tripadvisor are real but I often post reviews and pictures and I see them up there so at least i know mine are real.

No restaurant or hotel has ever asked me to post a review on tripadvisor or any other website. If they did ask me to do so, and the service was especially good or especially bad, then I would most likely review it.

My reviews are real and were not solicited by the hotel or restaurant.

We should ignore the #1 etc. ratings. It looks like it is just a measure of how many reports are posted. I have never found that metric to be at all useful.

I generally don't review the local places because I think Trip Adviser only when I am traveling, but my local is someone else's detination. I guess I have to rate the local places now to keep TA better informed.

Thanks, SunDried! Love the screen name!



>TripAdvisor Restaurant Reviews....are they real? <

No less real than any other set of opinions from an anonymous group of strangers.>

Ira: I think that there are websites that offer opinions on restaurants that are much more reliable than TripAdvisor, even though the posters are, for the most part, anonymous strangers.



eGullet.com, although not strong for restaurants in all cities, tends to attract posters knowledgeable about food, although obviously there are exceptions, and personally I do not find the site to be user friendly. There is a coterie of posters on Chowhound.com, that are very knowledgeable about the food scene in their own locales. And there are quite a few blogs written by posters who, while they are not known to me, seem spot on when it comes to opinions about restaurants.

And that is not counting the various review sites that are not written in English, for example, 11870, which I often use when selecting restaurants in Spain.



I do use TA for hotels, throwing out the highest and lowest and looking at the big picture when considering places with many reviews. If I find the same issues arising over and over again, I would take heed if it was an issue that was important to me.



<The Italian newspapers are getting very upset about TA at the moment, which given the country's reputation is highly amusing for instance did you know that more "Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil" is exported from Italy than is made in the country for world wide(including italian)consumption.>

BB: Sorry but I do not understand what you mean to say here.

"Product of Italy" means that the bottle contains only oil from Italian olives. "Imported from Italy," means that the bottle can contain oils from the olives grown outside Italy, but blended and shipped from Italy.

I very muchlike TripAdvisor and frequently and often review regardless of bad, good, average or ugly. I have only once been suprised when staying in a hotel that had received wow reviews andundesrved in my opinion, and I suspect there may have been fake reviews which placed it as a number one hotel.

I have also received great advice back after emailing reviewers.

PM'ing posters is a great way to verify reviews and get additional personalized info. Wish Fodor's had that feature

I rely heavily on TA hotel reviews when planning where to stay and feel therefore it's my obligation to also write reviews. I do not pay any attention to the 'ratings', they seem pretty useless. But I read all the comments - and as others have said - ignore the ones that indicate the person doesn't understand European hotels, etc. I find there is useful information in the reviews sometimes that isn't even on the hotel's site.

I have been asked by a couple of hotels to write a review, but I was going to do that anyway. I understand how a hotel can ask you to write a review since they obviously have your email from the reservation. I don't understand how a restaurant can ask to review them. Do they do this in person when you are still eating there? Do they email you (like the hotels do)? If so, how does the restaurant know your email?