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A lot of good comments here. I think Trip Advisor is fine as long as you understand that their "rating system" is a simple popularity contest, rather than having any actual criteria or being an indication of quality. Just the most votes makes you #1.
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In my experience, high value advertisers with TA can manipulate their reviews. On a number of occasions I have had 1 star ratings deleted because they “infringe their posting policy”. That simply wasn’t true. On all occasions those businesses have advertising relationships with TA. Due to the simply average calculations, business need to avoid 1 star reviews. It takes multiple 5 star reviews to offset a 1 star. google reviews : it’s incredibly easy to create fake gmail accounts and post fake reviews. We have one local business with 265 reviews and I consider at least 200 to be fake just looking at the poster profiles and style of posting. |
One star reviews are frequently useless. If you really want to pan a place, give two stars, mention something good, then pan them. Faint praise insulates from the delete-bots.
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I frequently discount one star reviews.
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The one star reviews I usually see are nonsensical rants, so I tend to discount them as well. although it goes both ways. I saw a 5 star museum review a few days ago because the person enjoyed standing in front and watching the sunset or river or pigeons. Now it was a 5 star museum, as I’ve been, but I don’t think you can give it a rating of any kind of you haven’t actually been inside. Same with a restaurant. |
Well the TA system is tricky. I gave a perfect review for the hotel I stayed at in Waikiki last month. It's no 5-star hotel but everything about it I loved. I try to be clear with my words that I fully realize Sand Villa is not Halekulani :-)
I think the easiest thing is to look at the author's TA profile. You can see the kinds of places they go, how often they posts, whether they are generally fair or unreasonable (like the person who finds rude waiters all around the world -lol). |
Tripadvisor is not the only review website to squash poor reviews. Expedia, booking etc will also edit them so that you don't see the negative. For that reason, if I have time I like to read the TA reviews from one to 3 stars. I tend to discount the 5 star reviews. There is a lot of confirmation bias. I also find it helpful to search for words on TA like "quiet" (or whatever is important to you).
I find the photos taken by reviewers helpful. Rank is not just a popularity contest. It is a secret combination of popularity and ranking. If I see a small hotel with waaay more reviews than the competition, though, I know they are soliciting 5 star reviews to pump up their TA ratings. |
Looking back at my history of posting reviews on TA, it seems that I am more likely to post when I really like a hotel, restaurant, etc. I've got a number of five star reviews, a few four star reviews and one three star review. That being said, I try to provide enough detail in the review to help the reader figure out if it sounds attractive to him or her.
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I've never done a review because a business asked me to. It has to be my own idea. And I've only done two dozen TA reviews over the years for places that meant something special to me.
The only negative reviews I've ever posted was ages ago for a high end foodie type restaurant (now closed btw -lol) here in Seattle who was super-duper snooty to us. Like way over the top bad attitude. |
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