Do you trust Trip Advisor reviews?

VNP

I'd just like to hear if there is a consensus on the reliability of this site. I’ve had one bad experience with a trip to the Maldives meeru reef which was terrible and expensive as hell. The reviews I read were so complimentary that i suspect they're not authentic, where as our experience was of a shabby poorly maintained, rat infested, dead coral surrounded island. I signed up to the site, wrote a few sentences about our experience purely to serve as a warning to other travellers, the review never made it to the site, i'm suspicious:mad:.
I stayed in Ireland at a hotel in the west recently, we booked with an insurance company deal, the reviews in general were hypercritical I was sweating thinking of cancelling, when we got there the hotel was amazing nearly every criticism I had read was unfounded, and I could only recommend the place to others(diamond coast hotel).
Anyway it'll probably be a good while before i can leave the country gallivanting again and i feel like we were stung with the Maldives thing

BuffyBot

Generally, I do and have found them to be pretty accurate.

However like everything, you need to take them with a grain of salt. Obviously a hotel that's had only one or two glowing reviews might be a little suspicious. And of course, one mans meat is anothers poison. What you think is an acceptable hotel, is anothers flea pit.

I've had plenty of my own reviews put up on TripAdvisor - so I suspect if yours didn't make it, it probably breached one of their submission rules.

cgarrad

I swear by them, they are remarkably good.

Made a recent trip to Poland a pleasure that i was not expecting ;-)

greenbicycle

I have generally found the reviews on trip advisor to be very accurate and always look at it before booking a hotel.

you seem to have had an experience in both ways where a place you found to be great had bad reviews and visa versa, thats really strange, maybe you just have the total opposite taste to trip advisor users?

Pity, you found that anyway cause i really rely on those reviews most of the time...

P. Breathnach

You can find a number of suspect reviews, both good and bad, so you need to bear that in mind when researching on tripadvisor..

Typically the good ones are sent in by the hotelier or pals of the hotelier, and sometimes by genuine guests but with financial inducements like a discount in exchange for a good review.

Some of the dodgy bad reviews might come from competitors, but my impression is that you get more from unreasonable people, typically the sort who want 5* service at 2* prices.

I think that I am fairly good at recognising those suspect reviews, and I have never been surprised by a hotel that I have checked out on the site.

Stinicker

I trust them pretty much but do more background checks also and never book a hotel before first consulting it. I am also a member and review each hotel I go to, and have got into a routine (Nerdy I know! :rolleyes:) that the first thing I do when I check into the room is to photograph it before I mess it up and post the photos up to the website also as this helps give users a non-biased view of the hotel and not having to depend in Hotel room photos which usually show the best rooms!

The best reviews are those than are not overly praising and also are not afraid to point out the little bits of criticism.

I once got stung when I booked a hotel which was a pure craphole (bed bugs and all, I was outta there in 20mins) in Budapest and it had only a few reviews, so I wrote them up a stinker, including pics.

I stayed in a dive hole of a Hostel in Perth where you got two complimentary free drinks at the bar for your review of the place, the site was filled with rather dubious reports of praise for what was a hovel.

I stayed at another Hotel in Singapore and they had a sign up by the complimentary PC's asking guests to rate the hotel but was not soliciting good reviews and we thank you for your opinion good or otherwise. The Hotel was marvellous so wasn't getting many bad reviews which would have been unjustified.

My most bizarre incident was when I sharply criticised a 5 star hotel (Hyatt) on their own internal review and got bumped up to a suite! all for my critique of having to pay for the net there!

magentas

I've always found it to be a helpful site but you must remember that at the end of the day, it's other peoples opinions and not everyone sees things the same!

I stayed in a lovely hotel where they had huge buffets every morning for breakfast with any and every kind of food you could imagine. I especially loved their fruit and ate the most beautiful fresh juicy melon I ever had!

At airport on the way home we met a woman who had stayed there too and she was whinging about how the food was terrible, she loved fruit and there was poor selection blahblahblah.

When I said to her that I thought melon was gorgeous she said "what melon?"
Either she was coming down at last min when they were clearing away or she was just a dope!:rolleyes:

We had two very diff opinions on same hotel

OP you should write good review for Diamond Coast and re-write negative one for Maldives if that's how you feel but give valid reasons and don't be aggresive or they won't entertain you at all

VNP

I just Found out the critique of my review has a time share and is involved in the place i was moaning about, and wants none of my straight talking "style" and there you have it. My honesty was not aggressive, realistic not falsely pleasant is a better way to proceed in my opinion Magentas without trying to sound smart. I know im being quite frank but im sure that’s appreciated by some, obviously not stake holders trying to maintain a %age of excellent reviews. There are some good reviews and the range and size of the site obviously means that this sort of sand bagging/ nursing of an investment goes on and it can be reported, however I don’t know if I’ll believe what I read anymore without looking at the reviewers previous experience nerdy or what eh:D

Bill2673

I use it and find it helpful but wouln't take it as gospel.

If a place has less than twenty reviews and has very good reviews, I would tend to look at the profile of the reviewers. If Brad from Milwaukee has only ever made one review in his entire life and its a five star review for a hotel in Seville, I would be suspicious.

I did have a bad experience in a hotel in Rome that was rated very highly on tripadvisor. It was just crummy, mouldy walls....no lift which was a right pain, crap food, in a bad part of town.....it was all bad. When i posted a review I read subsequently that '12 out of 13 readers found the review unhelpful" which I thought a bit odd, since the place was umambigously crap and the positive reviews of a joyful experience were unambigously misleading. However, as described above, there were only about 10 or 15 reviews done.

(On that note, I always prefer a balanced review....am suspicious of the very gushing reviews, places that are "simply wonderful" and "made our dreams come true" and so on).

Otherwise, I have generally found it good, have found decent hotels in many cities through it.

An interesting indicator is to look at hotels or restaurants in Dublin or your home place and see if you agree.

mackey087

we stayed in the econ lodge inn orlando last month, the reviews were ok but some were bad. i found the plcae to be clean and the staff friendly. some of the reviews gave out stink about the cleaning staff but the woman doing our room went out of her way to keep it tidy and was helpful about places to go. guess you have to take a chance. we've used it for malta, canaries, portugal and so far we have no complaints

FouxDaFaFa

I usually find them to be pretty accurate and think it's a good resource to have to get an indication of what your fellow travellers think of a place.

However, you have to take into consideration a number of things. Like people have mentioned, people's tastes may not be yours. Also, some reviews may be a few years old. Quality of service and board may have gotten dramatically better or worse since then.

ncmc

I adore Trip Advisor, it's my bible when booking a holiday, not only for the hotel reviews, but for the travel forums which are, for the most part, amazingly helpful.

When looking at the hotel reviews, I do take them with a pinch of salt. If a reviewer has only just signed up to the site and only has that one contribution, I tend to disregard their review, especially if it is overly critical or overly gushing. It is a sad situation, but like any site that relies on public contributions, people will use it to their advantage and either talk up their own premises, or diss competitors.

As for the other reviews, I read through them and pick out things that are important to me, for example, if someone gives out about the business centre then that's something that doesn't matter to me, so I tend to ignore it. My red flags would be someone critising the cleanliness or location, because those things are important to me. I find Americans tend to be more critical than others, especially about European hotels as they tend to use American hotels as a benchmark. European hotels tend to be smaller, more expensive and don't always have things like lifts and air con which would be pretty standard in American hotels. So I would always read a review from an American with a more open mind than an Irish or an English person.

Also, like any public forum (including Boards!) you will from time to time just get cranks and trolls, you just have to try and weed those reviews out. Also, don't be too obsessed with the number ranking, number 41 out of 400 could have 3 and a half stars out of 5, so could number 164, so I tend to go by the average star rating and the percentage of people who would recommend it to a friend rather than the ranking.

Like the previous poster, I always review every hotel I stay in and as often as I can,I take photos of the room before I mess it up and post those too. I find the travellers photos are much more enlightening than the hotels own photos, which frankly can be hilariously inaccurate sometimes!

To the OP, I have done nearly 30 hotel reviews, and I have never had one changed or not printed. It does take 48-72 hours though. I suspect you breached some of their posting rules, Trip Advisor have to be very careful of possible libel as they have several court cases pending against them.

VNP

Below is the reply to the many remarks over the utube clip of a poor unsuspecting couple who had their ceremony made a mockery of by maldevian resort staff. This site obviously is not a platform for religous views or a vent for angry disenfranchised couples who have been made a mockery of, and then put on the internet to make an international mockery of. Trip advisor is just a corporation trying to make money and not rock the boat in any particular way, this is a wise approach but this disclaimer would appear to narrow down the content to the niceties only.

“ Vilu Reef Resort Wedding Ceremony Video ”
31 October 2010, 18:31
To all,
As per the message posted by TA_MikeW on this matter::
You may have noticed that we have deleted several topics in this forum today which linked to news reports about a recent wedding ceremony at Vilu Reef. Please understand that it is not our intent in deleting these topic to censor any points of view or to withhold relevant travel information from our members.Rather, these topics have been removed because they were in violation of our forum posting guidelines. In particular, they cited articles that contained language and other content that TripAdvisor does not consider to be family-friendly, including profanities and religiously divisive and insulting remarks.
Moreover, the posting of these articles has led to further arguments among our members containing similarly unacceptable remarks posted directly in our forums.For these reasons, we have removed the topics in question, and we would ask you to please refrain from creating any new topics about this incident.
I'll try to make this clearer, since we still have new members arriving on the forum in order to talk about this incident.
We will remove topics that focus on a specific incident such as this, just as we would remove topics discussing the details of injuries or death, whether caused by accidents, negligence or criminal acts. We remove reports on individuals suspected of, arrested for, or charged with criminal activity. .We remove topics in which authors broadcast a call for boycott of the destination, based on these news stories, or calls for outside governments to intervene in local politics or criminal investigations. We remove topics that contain social commentary, political debates, and religious discussions that have no direct relevance to travel. We remove links to news stories and videos that contain graphic descriptions of these events if the linked material includes language or subject matter that is not family-friendly.
We remove topics that serve no purpose but to circulate gossip, speculation and unsubstantiated rumors about a specific event, and agitate others into arguments by venting their personal negative reactions to the situation or the persons involved. We have removed numerous topics and posts on this subject that contained threatening language, racist and prejudicial comments, hostility and allegations regarding the local residents of the islands.
We will also remove topics and messages that criticize TripAdvisor Polices and Procedures, or the actions of TripAdvisor Staff. We will remove all messages that misrepresent our Policies and Procedures, or presume to inform others of an agenda on the part of TripAdvisor to censor content. We will remove messages that quote, misquote, quote out of context, mis-interpret, paraphrase or invent correspondence exchanged with members of the TripAdvisor Support Team.
We realize that members and readers may be interested in this story, but the appropriate place to find information about any story in the news is to look to agencies that report the news. The TripAdvisor forums should not be considered a news agency, nor are we the editorial pages of a newspaper, news magazine, etc. Discussing this incident on our site will not protect any one from suffering similar circumstances, just as discussing a murder or assault on a specific individual will not protect any future traveler or local from those crimes. Tragedies, criminal acts and abuse occur in every destination around the world, to locals and travelers alike --- gossip and speculation about the circumstances that took place in any specific event broadcast in the news or via youtube videos gone viral is neither family friendly nor relevant to these pages.
Thanks for your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

TA_Jane
TripAdvisor Support Team

And here is the clip which is the Maldevian attitude towards tourists in a nut shell rip them off and insult them in a childish manner while smiling at them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFYSL91BUdo

Tech3

I find TripAdvisor to be good but do alot of research elsewhere too before going anywhere. I wouldnt solely trust that website for a place I was heading off to, usually search the web and buy books.

I think the reply above is down to the constant posting of the incident in the websites forum. What you should do is give a rating for all the places you visited over there to warn others if they decide to pick that Maldives resort as their destination.

VNP

I read in the paper yesterday that Trip advisor is being spring cleaned and suspected fake reviews will be investigated and the reviers expelled after a 2 week amnesty to remove their reviews, or face legal action unless they can provide proof they stayed there. That sounds like a step in the right direction.

Myyra

VNP wrote: »

I read in the paper yesterday that Trip advisor is being spring cleaned and suspected fake reviews will be investigated and the reviers expelled after a 2 week amnesty to remove their reviews, or face legal action unless they can provide proof they stayed there. That sounds like a step in the right direction.

Sounds good, I'd say we'll be reading a lot of stories like this one once they are done with their investigation! http://www.tnooz.com/2010/11/03/news/tripadvisor-slaps-red-badge-on-hotel-for-writing-own-reviews/

As for trusting the revies in general, I still do, havent had a bad experience yet, hotels have always pretty much been what I was expecting to get

Lollymcd

I suppose saying that Tripadvisor is like a bible is quite accurate as I don't think that the bible is entirely trustworthy either, though there may be little nuggets of useful information in there!!! The forums are great, especially the destination experts. As a general rule when I read the hotel reviews if a hotel as a lot of high ratings by loads of posters who signed up and only posted one review of a "spectacular" hotel I discount it, the same if they are all one-time-only bad reviewers. I always cross check with priceline or booking.com to see what kind of reviews the hotel got on these sites as you can only post a review if you have stayed there. I have over 40 reviews on TA and I have never had one go missing, bad or good!

Kilmeaney 1

I have always found them realiable,both for Hotels and Restaurants.
I know you are depending on other peoples experiences and i respect them, but i am sometimes puzzled as to how some people can find a hotel so good and others find the same hotel so bad.

bills

I use tripadvisor regularly. It is a good indicator but thats all.
I find it very subjective. What someone else is willing to accept in a hotel room, i wouldnt be!! On my last trip, I was very unhappy with the hotel but lots of people had given mediocre/positive reviews which lead me to think are we staying in the same hotel!!!

bamboozle

i find booking.com much better because you can only post a review on booking.com if you have booked a room through the website (after your hotel stay, you receive an email asking you to rate the hotel). whereas tripadvisor can have any amount of interested parties posting bogus reports on hotels.

ncmc

Expedia is the same I believe, you have to have booked the hotel with them before you can post a review. I would use Trip Advisor along with these other sites to get a good overview of a hotel.

Leper

I trust Tripadvisor but keep an open mind on several matters:-

1. Has the reviewer a vested interest in promoting the hotel/apartments/resort?

2. Has the reviewer a vested interest in not promoting the hotel etc?

3. On the plus side there is a good chance that where wrong information is provided other reviewers will contradict and correct.

4. Always bear in mind that one man's food is another man's poison.

5. Be careful of how people can reframe negatives e.g "swimming pool filthy, but poolside bar great" etc.

6. Be prepared to go outside of Tripadvisor for more info simply by googling the name of the apartments or hotel.

VNP

Myyra am i to suspect this gentleman's rhetoric would suggest he considers their approach akin to a "WITCH HUNT", i didnt get it for a sec tho, LOL its funny.

RobertKCole says:
November 3, 2010 at 1:55 pm
If I am not mistaken, the color used by TripAdvisor appears to be Scarlet. Nathaniel Hawthorne would be proud.
I would propose an alternative approach that would provide a greater deterrent for hotels considering gaming the TripAdvisor system.
First, a two-step process to determine if a hotel suspected of gaming the system truly authored its own reviews and to ensure justice is appropriately served:
Step 1) Throw the General Manager into a deep lake.
a) If the individual sinks, the hotel did not write the reviews and should be fully exonerated.
b) If the individual floats, the hotel did create the illegitimate reviews and be punished pursuant to step 2.
Step 2) Burn the General Manager at the stake.
One may ask what would happen if the nefarious activity was undertaken by a hotel brand, management company or third party without the knowledge or consent of the property general manager?
This is simply solved.
In the case of chain affiliated hotels, the CEO of the management company, brand and/or third party would also simultaneously be subjected to the same lake test.
In the interest of fairness, only the individual(s) that floated would be subjected to incineration.
As a result of this easily implemented policy, one would imagine the number of faked reviews would drop precipitously.
Please do not hesitate to contact me for solutions to any other pressing challenges facing the global hospitality industry.

MooShop

I found Trip Advisor to be very mixed. I travelled for 7 months in 2010 through Asia. I always consulted the site about various places I visited and places of interest within those town's/cities.

Some reviews were very accurate, others were miles off, like I had the total opposite opinion whether good or bad about some places.

All you can really do is research as much as possible, ask local hostel and hotel owners, I found this one of the best ways of finding out information (in Asia anyway)

In my opinion you can never really trust one source, do your research and you will rarely be disappointed. A lack of research can end in disaster.

One thing I would say is that everyone is different. Talking to other travellers and people who rave about somewhere might be somewhere that your not too keen on.

SeaFields

Was just reading about what others thought of tripadvisor - I havent really used it before. I booked a weekend in the sun over the weekend for the end of the month. Booked accommodation based on location and price.

Then I looked at the reviews :eek:

It was only when I read some of the reviews and saw why people rated the place so badly...(among others)

- The swimming pool was too cold.
- There were no porters to carry our bags
- The restaurant uses MSG in their cooking
- Staff didn't speak English

Some people say the rooms are filthy, others say its a clean and tidy. Some say good location, others say it miles out of the way. I am taking the bad reviews with a pinch of salt and a lot of the good reviews seem to be from Irish people who have stayed there before.

It still has placed doubts in my mind and I don't know whether to cancel and re-book or go ahead. Have a few weeks to decide that anyway.

wicorthered

I find that different nationalities expect and accept different standards. Usually find Americans and mainland Europeans to be very picky, wanting 5 star service no matter where they stay. Their reviews seem to focus more on the little faults rather then what is good about the place. Aussies, British and Irish on the other hand appear fairly laid back. Their reviews seem more honest and less biased.

I once stayed in a small B and B in Sweden and a review from America gave the place awful stick for having no lift, the place had 2 stories :eek::eek:.

Generally if British, Australian and Irish reviews are poor you know the place must be bad and if Canadian, German and American reviews are good the place must be good.

Feeling good

VNP wrote: »

I'd just like to hear if there is a consensus on the reliability of this site.

I always do my research - use Trip Advisor as well as other sites like holidaywatchdog or booking.com and find them very usefull. It looks like most reviews are pretty honest.
Usually I decide what is really important for me personally and what is not, then it works perfectly. Just keep in mind that people are different.