I think TA is a wonderful source of information. Its abused for sure, we have a restauraunt in town with 10 tables always empty and has pages of 5 star ratings and nearby a 50 table restaraunt always full with 1 page of mixed to good reviews

Overall I think 90+% are legit reviews but only half of the legit reviews are worthwhile

It is just my perception, and I admit I could be very wrong, but some of the 5 star reviews I have read on TA seem to be written in the language of a brochure, rather than how a customer would write a review. So these arouse my suspicion that these types of reviews are posted by people who have a vested interest in promoting their hotel. Has anyone else had this suspicion or is this just me? I would be happy to be proved wrong on this issue.

Trip Advisor has been a big help to me in planning trips in the US and Europe. I use it in conjunction with other on-line information and guidebooks.

I discount what is written by those who have posted only one or very few reviews. and I give extra weight to those written by folks who have posted many reviews.

I also read with special care and interest reviews written by people from countries other than the US.

I ignore rants by people who claim to have had a bad experience at a place where everybody else had a good experience.

HTTY

I find tripadvisor reviews helpful. As someone said, different people have different expectations. It's pretty easy to pick up on that when folks are complaining about something that would not be out of line for other folks. It's pretty easy to pick out glossy-brochure-speak.

Yes, experts are biased and some are good and some are not. It's very easy to take advantage of what tripadvisor has to offer and not read a single word of what a DE has posted.

Take the good and leave the bad.