Why I don't trust Trip Advisor restaurant ratings
 

I follow with amusement the restaurant ratings on Trip Advisor in my home town of Naples, Florida. I know several people in the restaurant business here and have been alerted to a couple restaurants which have asked their employees to register and rate the restaurant (praising it) or rate a competitor (slamming it, of course). I once alerted the editors to a specific restaurant which was suddenly receiving raves from all brand new contributors and told them I knew as a fact that the manager had asked employees to register and submit the reviews. And I messaged one of those who ranted how she's eaten at every restaurant in Naples and this is by far the best, asking her what other restaurants in Naples she might suggest since she's eaten at so many. She screamed back at me that I needed to get a life, and next thing I know the editors prevented me from messaging other posters. Although they had promised to check out those bogus reviews, they still remain and I've never heard back from them.
Clearly, they are not interested (or don't know quite how) in stopping all the bogus reviews.

As an interesting side note, the one poster who raved about that restaurant actually posted two reviews. She also raved about another restaurant in town. This is the gal I asked about other recommendations and she screamed back at me. Well guess what -- the manager of the restaurant in question is married to the head chef at the other restaurant that reviewer raved about. Coincidence?

But suddenly out of the depths of the listings a restaurant catapulted to the top of the list as the most popular. Wow! Over a period of two and a half years there were 5 reviews of the place, mostly pretty positive and mostly from people who have numerous contributions. Then BAM. In a three week period there were 8 new reviews, ALL by first time contributors who registered to post rave reviews -- all giving it the top rating. Suspicious? What do you think? Naples most popular? Or Naples best organized staff?

very interesting. For restaurants.. which sites do you trust most? Chowhound?

TA, should be used with caustion IMO. I think Chowhound has the most action and input. But I have been burned by some recs there too.

It seems the disease is on Chowhound and Menupages in NYC. Both the criticism and the praise for many places seem out of proportion with the establishment. On top of that half the people do not know ow which they speak. There are some cuisines I know well but most I do not know well at all. And for the ones I know some of comments are simply bizarre.

Lincasanova

Go to Chowhound and worse Menupages and see what people say about tapas. You will be stunned by hlaf of the comments. You wll also find that about a third know tapas.

so.. where should we go? ( besides Fodors)

I agree that these kinds of reviews need to be read with a critical eye.

However, on a recent trip to NYC I got some good leads on ethnic restaurants using sources mentioned here and the reviews that come up when locating restaurants on maps.google.com. I placed more reliance on restaurants with many reviews than those with a few reviews.

These sources also helped me avoid restaurants with ear-splitting noise, tiny cramped tables, long waits at the bar, etc.

On more than one occasion New Yorker friends asked me, "How did you find this place?"

Maps.google.com is also often the only convenient source for reviews of restaurants in towns that are off the tourist path.

I don't use tripadvisor for food reviews. Zagat's is my go-to for restaurant reviews, even over chowhound.

Let's face it ... you can never trust restaurant/hotel reviews on any site, really. I just read everything I can about a place, try to sift the good from the bad, and still you can get stung. There's no reasonable way to prevent fake reviews, I guess. Patrick, I'm always surprised that the websites don't want you go call out the "fakers." They obviously don't really care ... :(

In most cases chowhound is fairly useless as people just discuss the same restaurants over and over again. But at least they are mostly locals, vs TA which is really useless for restaurants. I don't even look there.

Zagats big flaw is that they nominate the restaurants to be reviewed every year.

For finding local neighborhood spots, I use yelp, but read it with a critical eye, and usually see if the local newspaper has any reviews.

I know
I have lost confidence in Tripadvisor ratings lately also. While restarants(especially small market ones) have always been suspect, Ive noticed many more hotels now flooded with obviously bogus reviews.

Tripadvisor is excellent for hotel reviews (not rankings) but useless for restaurants for the most part. Zagat lost credibility a while ago but is still a useful tool along with other sources. Have a look at savoryny.com and urbanspoon.com

Are you home Neopatrick?

Tripadvisor has the same problem with fake reviews on hotels, too. It's especially bad on the Hawaii boards.

Jet Blue flies nonstop San Diego to Boston. All the other airlines seem to have a stop.

It is the situation even with AAA. Some of the hotels or restaurants they under-rated while others are over-rateed.
My parents travel and eat at nice places often, and while we usually agree, I don't always agree with what they say is outstanding. I always try to be open minded with yelp, aaa, ta, mom and dad, etc, etc.

Lincasanova-

Unfortunately you must go with the consensus from various sources. I think if you ask here, most NY'ers know their neighborhoods well and then some places elsewhere. I think if you ask specific questions you will get better answers.

So type of food, price, and if important neighborood.
And for certain cuisines, such as Italian there are very good regional choices or French where there are both bistro and haute. There will be of course some disagreemrnts but you can read why people like certain places and others not.

You will also see that tapas in NY has taken on a life of its own to mean small plates and not necessarily Spanish tapas. But there are enough places now emulate a San Sebastian, Gallego, or Catalan tasca, it is the Japanese and Moroccan tapas you must watch out for.

Neopatrick - I've rarely used Tripadvisor for restaurant reviews, but have used them extensively for hotel reviews while confirming with Fodors. What is your opinion of the validity of hotel reviews on TA?

Same with hotels, same with attractions...

And one of my reviews was never posted only because I typed how much I paid for it :) Oh, well...

I have also noticed a lot of fake hotel reviews on certain boards (Peru seems to have its share) but they are easy to spot. If the TA reviewer has only one post ever and joined the day they gave their one an only ranking, I will ignore if it is one-sided. A very small inn, say 6-10 rooms, looks suspicious to me if there are proportionately way too many reviews. Because TA includes the number of reviews as well as the score in calculating rank, there can be some very odd results for the #1 rankings in popularity. I always check the lowest ranks, just in case someone has posted a "WTF" review.

Here's why I'm also leery of Tripadvisor ratings ... someone asked for a restaurant recommendation in Crested Butte and we recommended an excellent little restaurant we've eaten at several times, surely the best meals I've had in Colorado.

They emailed back and said "Are you sure? It's only rated # 14 of 34 restaurants in CB!"

Curious about why (and how) this could be so I looked at the TA postings. There were five reviews and the most recent four were all for the highest possible rating, comments like "splendid", "best food in the Rockies", "incredible French food", etc.

The fifth rating was several years old and for one star, which was enough to drag the overall rating way down. The poster said he had eaten there several times and thought it was great but on his last trip to CB he tried calling while in transit to make the reservation. Because it's a very small restaurant with just a few tables they require a local phone number (like your hotel) or, if that's not possible, a credit card #. This guy didn't know the hotel phone # and wouldn't give his cc number for security reasons and got so angry that they wouldn't take his reservation that he gave them the lowest rating possible just for spite.

While an experienced TA user might read the reviews and 'read between the lines' if there is a single vindictive posting, if a place is ranked half way down the list most people would probably skip the reviews for that restaurant completely.

<<<Jet Blue flies nonstop San Diego to Boston. All the other airlines seem to have a stop.>>>

well, I obviously meant to post THIS on a different thread!

I think menupages is useful - but not for the reviews. Agree than many of the reviewers seem not to have any taste buds at all. But it is useful for finding a specific type of food or seeing the actual menu/prices of a place you're interested in. As for reviews - that's why there's Zagat's - or friends and neighbors.

I have never used Trip Advisor restaurant reviews. But I very much like their destination forums (similar format to here on Fodor's).

One of the biggest problems with the TA restaurant ratings is that they pull in reviews from other sources, credited to "Anonymous." These reviews are worse than useless, often no more than two or three words in total. They completely skew the ratings to point where they are ridiculous. I've complained to TA and their Destination Expert board is filled with complaints, but they have fallen on deaf ears.

If you're looking for a restaurant in a decent sized-city, one of my favorite sources is their local "underground" newspaper, usually a weekly like "City Paper" or in my neck of the woods "Westword."

So although TA has other good qualities, I completely reject their restaurant ratings and view their reviews with a grain of salt.

If you want to know about a restaurants, I'm tellin' ya, ask your question on the destination forum for the place you're going to. I (and many other regulars) answer questions all the time about Seattle restaurants (for example) that people are comparing and trying to choose between.

Just returned to this thread, read through it all, and finally Suze hit the nail on the head for me. My best luck with restaurants has been coming here and asking. Fodorites seem rarely to steer me wrong. Here in Hawaii for 5 weeks, I've relied on the advice from Fodors (the guide books to some extent but more from personal recommendations here on the talk site).

Am I home now, someone asked? Nope. Posted the original post above while sitting on my lanai in Hana, Maui in the rain. Posted this while sitting in my room at the Old Wailuku Inn on Maui (a Fodor's recommendation which I like). They even called my room to tell me it was starting to rain and my top was up.

Drove back from Hana on the Hana Highway this morning in the rain. Because I finished the highway so early, I headed to Hali'imaile General Store for a spectacular lunch. Where did I find that? Another Fodorite recommendation (and highly recommended in Fodors Guide). Just for fun, I just checked out Trip Advisor. Some of the reviews are kind of funny, and reading between the lines it was the high prices that clearly bothered most -- and I kind of understand that. My Ahi panzanella salad and a passionfruit iced tea was over $32 with tax and tip -- but simply spectacular. But when someone says, "I felt like we had just eaten in a trailer park" one can only scratch his head. Well guess what -- that review was an ONLY contribution from a poster who says, "Maui has many great restaurants but this isn't one of them". Duh, why not tell us about one of the "great" ones -- anyone else get the idea that this is a person connected with another place who is tired of all the raves for the "HM" General Store? Seems pretty obvious to me.

IMO your BEST review is your own MOUTH and STOMACH....

It is interesting to look at the Trip Advisor reviews of the restaurants in one's own town. Our town has lots of restaurants, and last time I checked, the highest rated restaurant is a run of the mill Mexican restaurant in a strip shopping center. The food is certainy edible, but nothing special at all.

Still, one can glean information from the reviews. I tend to discount ones about service because how does one know that the horrible server wasn't fired the very night he served the person who posted. But, for example, when every review mentions the tiny portions for the expensive price, that's pretty credible and the reader can decide if the portion size will be a problem or not.

Rating restaurants is tricky and from my experience over the years – greatly varies and is based on individual taste and geographic location.

So, as Dukey said it’s really up to you.

When we go I try and research some local places or “must eat” places (budget permitting) otherwise I use my favorite system of finding good restaurants:
I go 3-4 blocks in any direction from the touristic centers and follow the locals.

Why I like to ask on forums (rather than read already posted reviews) is you can have a conversation back & forth. I do the same thing for hotels.

I don't read the restaurant reviews there, but I've seen a ton of fake hotel reviews on Tripadvisor. There are two Mom and Pop places I stay at that are basic but fine, but they're obviously planting reviews. All of the reviewers have only rated one motel. Each one refers to the first names of the owners, uses the same word choices repeatedly, and mentions things that most customers would never know about the cleaning methods used by the staff. (As in "Steve and Carla even clean the doorknobs and the remote between customers!")

I usually look to TA's forums first, then maybe to the restaurant reviews. Posters who give solid travel advice generally also write accurate reviews.

I would take any forum with a grain of salt. I review both professional (critics, travel articles, etc.) as well as non-.

I personally put more faith in a local's review than others (non-professional). For a metropolitan area, for me, a "local" means a person who lives *IN* the city - *NOT a suburbanite. No offense against those suburbanites out there, as there *are* some that take themselves out (and clients) often for dining/entertainment - but not many.

I think that posters of reviews (or forums) should be a little more forthcoming as well. I mean - If you go to a more expensive restaurant and get the cheapest dish on the menu - or order a half-order at a busy restaurant. What do you think you are going to get with respect to quality and service? Less than overwhelming, to be sure, and probably quite a bit underwhelming.

If I see an employee's name in a review, I usually discount it. I mean, how often does anyone remember the name of their waiter or a hotel clerk. *Perhaps* the concierge if they do something totally extraordinary, like getting truly great seats to a sold-out event - but, honestly, how often does that happen?

I do wish that the websites (including TA's) would separate restaurants into categories (fine dining vs. casual) and they would separate the tours from the other attractions. I think that there is really a great skewing in the last. That's the one area where I think there is the greatest chance of "stuffing the ballot box".

And on the tours, give a little information such as if they are profit or non-profit; associated with museums or other institutions; etc.

Sorry if some of the comments got a little OT - but I thought it was in the general spirit of the thread.

I've got to say, I only use tripadvisor restaurant reviews if I really have to - when it's the only resource I can find. (I.e., small towns in Europe, when the local-language resources are non-existent and/or beyond my translation abilities). I try to use local resources, as well as chowhound, eGullet (but SO hard to search), and yelp, pretty much in that order.

But I read all reviews with an eye toward what experience the reviewer wanted, or got, and what their perspective was - the same way I look at TA hotel reviews. A family with 4 young children, on a strict budget and that doesn't eat out much is going to rate a restaurant (or hotel) entirely differently than I would (2 older kids, we're all pretty much in the foodie category) - it may still be a useful review to me, but only if their perspective is included in their comments.

We could all agree that the best ratings and reviews are those that are detailed, that give a little background on the reviewer and lots of objective information about the restaurant, both the ambiance and the food itself.

on TA you can PM the poster and ask about their review.

Suze, I can't. As I said, I did that once and politely asked a poster (whom I was 99% sure was the manager of the restaurant she was raving about) if perhaps she could recommend other restaurants in town since she says she's eaten at all of them but has never posted any other reviews of them. Clearly she understood why I was asking that. That's when she screamed at me about needing to get a life and apparently had me banned from pm'ing anyone. And when I forwarded my message to her and her message to me to the editors asking which one they felt was out of line, I never got a response.

Oh, maybe I should point out that I sent the same message to several "different" posters. I suspect the reason I got the angry message about getting a life is that ALL my messages ended up being received by the same poster, posing as different posters.

Neopatrick--We just returned from Maui! I miss it already.

I find that Tripadvisor is more reliable for hotels than restaurants, although it is difficult to sort through the bogus reviews. I generally ignore any review written by someone who has written only one or two reviews.

In my experience, the best source of info is here on Fodors.

I very frequently post reviews on Tripadvisor (under the same screen name) and I have noticed that my positive reviews are 95% rated as "helpful" by other users whereas my negative reviews are 70% rated as "not helpful".

In several cases, I even got angry messages from the hoteliers.

I must say, the reliability of TA reviews has sharply decreased in the last years, including that of hotel reviews. I find the travellers' photos (of hotels AND restaurant food) most helpful. Unfortunately, only few reviewers do upload their pictures. When I enter a hotel room, I regularly make some pictures for TA before we start to unpack.