Trip advisor reviews reliable ?

MaxSteele

What's your opinion on hotel reviews which has a very mixed overall opinion ? Are they over exaggerated ?

i.e, one page is listed with negative reviews, then the next page follows with consecutive 5 star ratings and reviews.

Currently looking at the hotel we booked in Albufeira on trip advisor.ie and I don't know whatmy overall impression is after reading 6 pages worth of them.

spurious

I'd look at other reviews by the 'bad' reviewers. If your hotel is the only one they have ever reviewed, I'd be suspicious. If they have reviewed a number of places, both positively and negatively and your hotel is a bad one, I'd pay a bit more attention to it.

ProudDUB

I read Tripadvisor reviews a lot. I find it very useful sometimes, but I also find that they can be a bit hit and miss in whether or not they are helpful to me. I find that very often things that do matter to me are never mentioned in reviews, but that things that matter a lot to other people but are irrelevant to me, come up a lot in reviews.

For example, I don't have any kids. I don't really care about whether or not the hotel management are good or bad about providing cots or cribs for babies, or whether or not the hotel is family friendly. I never eat breakfast, so I don't really care about how good or bad the continental breakfast buffet in the lobby is. But I have read very long detailed reviews going on and on and on about those things, as if only having a choice of 2 different kinds of ommlette in the morning is the end of the world. Some people care more about the state of the place re upkeep and cleanliness and will complain about the slightest speck of dust, whereas other more budget conscious reviewers are more willing to over look shabby decor if the price is right. It's hard to know who is right until you get there.

So I tend to look for mentions about things that are important to me, and over look the rest of it. If one specific thing, be it good or bad, gets frequent mentions, then I tend to take that as gospel, and it normally turns out to be correct. So ask yourself what things really, really matter to you in a hotel. What things could make or break your holiday in the hotel? If you can get some useful information about those, and filter out the rest, Trip Advisor can be really useful.

zagmund

Umm, but if you discount reviews from people who have kids and/or breakfast then you are really limiting the set of reviews that are useful to you.

I check out a combination of factors - reviewers with only a couple of reviews, most of which are "this is a good place to visit when in <city name>" can be disregarded as they are just trying to bump up their review numbers. Equally reviewers (in my experience) who say something like "the front of house staff will go out of their way to do anything you need" can be discounted. Most people would write "the people at reception got me a <whatever> when I asked them, without any issues" or something specific to *their* visit. My favourite are the ones that say "I travel everywhere for work and this hotel was the best/worst . . ." If you travel the world for work and stay in hotels so much how come this is your first review?

z

athtrasna

I generally discount the super wonderful ones, and the dire ones and try to assess the happy medium. If there's a problem flagged in the reviews, email the hotel about it for re-assurance.

coylemj

athtrasna wrote: »

I generally discount the super wonderful ones, and the dire ones and try to assess the happy medium. If there's a problem flagged in the reviews, email the hotel about it for re-assurance.

+1 No hotel is perfect and you're always going to get a grumpy guest who can never be satisfied and who will write negative review to 'get even'. There was a program on Channel 4 about a year ago in which they portrayed a few people who were basically obsessive nutters and who's speciality was finding faults and writing negative reviews on Tripadvisor.

You need to ignore the shameless plugs involving words and phrases copied and pasted straight from the brochure and which usually contain praise for unspecific service e.g. 'staff were wonderful, couldn't do enough for us' and any use of the word 'amazing' is usually a sign that it's a fake. Ask yourself, when was the last time you used the word 'amazing' to describe a hotel bedroom? Nuff said.

I'd look for other reviews by the people who lavish praise on a place, if you can't find any then I'd discount that review, it's obviously planted and a fake review.

ProudDUB

zagmund wrote: »

Umm, but if you discount reviews from people who have kids and/or breakfast then you are really limiting the set of reviews that are useful to you.

Not really. I have gotten lots of useful info on a wide variety of topics that have nothing to do with having kids or brekkie options. For example, the best side of the hotel to have a room on to avoid lobby/traffic noise, or to have a good view. Or the iffy wifi that the hotel claims to be widely available all over the hotel, or the proximity of the hotel to nearby attractions, or the free airport shuttles that are laid on, but only run very infrequently, or the safety of the area the hotel is in if you are on foot, or what the parking charges are, or what state the gyms and pool areas are in, or whether or not the pool is heated, or whether or not reception is tended 24 hours a day. They are just a few things off the top of my head, about the last 2 hotels that I stayed in, that I got more useful info from Trip Advisor than I did the hotels official websites. I just had to dig thru a lot of stuff that didn't really concern me to get to it.

Assassin saphir

I would say yes, I used trip advisor when choosing a hotel for my last holiday. I found most of the bad reviews were from Americans whinging about there no lift in a 2 storey hotel, the bed was too soft and there wasn't enough staff to serve them drinks on the beach. Really trivial stuff.

Jocelynel

i've an apartment that i advertise in albufeira on tripadvisor. i've only 8 reviews, score of 4.5/5, but the apartment was booked out by november gone for this july/august and i really feel that's because of the reviews on tripadvisor.

i do feel that a negative review from anyone can have a detrimental effect on any accommodation/restaurant so i think some comments on trip advisor should be taken with a pinch of salt! a lot of moany people looking for a bargain price for 7star accommodation!

i booked a b&b in the UK last summer based on a score of 5/5 on trip advisor...well it was the worst dump i've ever been too....checked out after one night and went to premierinn!

BuffyBot

By all means use it, but remember a) more people are likely to complain about something than praise it and b) always be aware that some uber-glowing reviews might be plants.

Also read the negative reviews. 8/10 of them are going "I paid 19 pound a night for the M4 Travelodge and there was NO ROOM SERVICE AND NO POOL" type crap. Balance out what your expectations of a hotel are for the price you're paying and measure that against what others are saying.

Stinicker

I use trip advisor and also rate hotels I stay in, another good place to look is bookings.com which allow you to only rate a place you have actually booked which helps cut out alot of the shill first time reviews on TripAdvisor.

Merkin

I'm a committed reviewer and if I see really bad reviews I check out the review count and quality of those reviewers posts.Normally a pretty good indication.Likewise with really gushing reviews.Any good reviewer will have a well balanced list of places they've been to.

schemingbohemia

I tend to ignore American comments as their expectations are way higher than mine, especially at the price range I'm looking at!

For example I've stayed twice in the Copthorne Tara in London, it only gets 3.8 or so on Tripadvisor, but I've managed to get great deals there €120 a night, and it's a really nice hotel. Some people complain about the size of the rooms but for London I think they're a great size, others complain about the breakfast but from reading tripadvisor reviews we discovered a really nice cafe around the corner.

coylemj

Just spotted on Tripadvisor that readers were 'raving about' a certain number of hotels and the Croke Park Hotel was one of them so had a look.

There is a string of five star reviews all in the past 10 days, clearly someone's been busy!

One of the reviews is a classic plant - it awards the hotel five stars and says things like 'The hotel and staff are faultless' and - get this - there are 'tons of great restaurants in the area!'

Another review: 'The porter is always available to assist with luggage and to escort guests to their rooms'. How do they know he's 'always available' - did they sit in the lobby for an hour making sure that every guest that arrived was offered his services?

ncmc

I am an obsessive Trip Advisor user and have reviewed a lot of places myself. For the most part I find it is an excellent resource, but there are some caveats to that
- Check out the post count of the person posting, if they have only one or two posts and are writing either a glowing or overly negative review, I discount them. Especially if they have only joined on the day they posted the review or have no forum posts either.
- Americans can be very particular, especially about room size. If Americans talk about small rooms, lack of elevator etc I tend to discount that, because Europeans are more used to that.
- Like ProudDub, I discount information that isn’t relative to me, I also don’t have kids so don’t care about reviews where the negatives are to do with ‘kid related’ issues.
- I give more credence to reviews with pictures, for one, it proves the person stayed there and also gives a better idea of what the hotel is like than the management provided pictures.
- Don’t automatically discount hotels that are lower down the ranking, they may have the same average score than some of the higher ranking hotels, not sure how Trip Advisor work their rankings, but the number 2 hotel could have an average score of 4, and the number 20 could also have an average of 4. Have a look at the amount percentage of ‘average’ or better reviews. I find this a better indicator than just the rank on TA
- Read the management replies if there are some, these can show the other side of the story and can be often very enlightening about the reviewer and the management!

athtrasna wrote: »

I generally discount the super wonderful ones, and the dire ones and try to assess the happy medium. If there's a problem flagged in the reviews, email the hotel about it for re-assurance.

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with this. I have given glowing reviews to places, I have also given dire reviews. I don’t think that makes my opinion any less valid and I certainly don’t have a vested interest one way or another. If my experience is really brilliant or really bad, than I will review accordingly.

I think you sometimes need to read between the lines of a review, sometimes they say more about the reviewer than the hotel!

keithclancy

ncmc wrote: »

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with this. I have given glowing reviews to places, I have also given dire reviews. I don’t think that makes my opinion any less valid and I certainly don’t have a vested interest one way or another. If my experience is really brilliant or really bad, than I will review accordingly.

I think you sometimes need to read between the lines of a review, sometimes they say more about the reviewer than the hotel!

+1, if a place is very good, i'll give it an excellent review.
Usually good staff tip it for me.

But the reviews I make are always based on the price I paid for it in the market where I'm visiting.

You get some absolute nutters too, was behind a guy in the queue at a Hilton and he was raving on about a south facing room and not a north facing room. :pac::pac:

sentient_6

Assassin saphir wrote: »

I would say yes, I used trip advisor when choosing a hotel for my last holiday. I found most of the bad reviews were from Americans whinging about there no lift in a 2 storey hotel, the bed was too soft and there wasn't enough staff to serve them drinks on the beach. Really trivial stuff.

I read one complaining about the hot & cold taps being separate fixtures. You couldn't make it up.

coylemj

I mentioned the Channel 4 program earlier so will tell you about one of the people featured who have made writing Tripadvisor reviews their calling in life.

This guy was single and travelled places with his mother in order to check them out and write online reviews. His standard practice was that when he arrived in a hotel or B&B room he got a felt pen and marked a tiny dot in the corner of one of the sheets on the bed in order to be able to check the next day if the sheets had been changed. When challenged by the (off camera) program maker why they should change the sheets every day, he said that he might have a skin complaint that made that medically necessary. On being further challenged as to how the proprietor was supposed to know about this (non-existent) skin complaint, he said that they should ask him when checking in if he did have such a complaint!

At the end of the program your sympathies were very much with the hotel and B&B operators when you realised that their reputations were at the mercy of wackos like him. Even his mother said (on camera) that he had no friends!

Kathnora

I use Tripadvisor for booking all my holidays. Like others said the Americans can be very FUSSY so I always say.....if an American gives a good review then it is really good!! You always have to read at least 5 or 6 reviews on any hotel in order to make a balanced judgement. I have been submitting reviews for years myself too and whether they were positive or negative they have always been printed.
Yes, we all have to accept that reviews can be planted too hence the need to read a few of them.
I try to be fair myself in my reviews as I know how much damage can be caused by a bad review.

ProudDUB

Don't think its fair to give the Americans a bad rap for their reviews. US hotels (even the very ordinary and average ones) tend to come with a lot more bells and whistles as standard, than European ones do. There are also far more chains of hotels operating in the US than there are here, so standards of accommodation are standardized right across the entire country far more than they are in Europe, where a lot of hotels/guest houses/b&b's are stand alone operations with often wildly fluctuating standards of accommodation.

We may bash the Yanks as being overly nit picky, but they are just used to having more bells and whistles in their hotels than we are here. So when they come over here and don't find a mini bars in their room or ice making & vending machines in the hall ways, they'll bitch about it. We'd probably do the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot !

Kathnora

Well, Proud Dub when I said Americans were fussy my judgement was mostly based on reviews they wrote about American hotel chains such as Best Western, Holiday Inn, Comfort Inn etc so they were criticising their OWN

coylemj

I think the main issue with Americans is that from their parents they learn not to put up with crap service so they are more demanding than us and the Brits who tend to put up with bad service and are reluctant to make a scene for fear we'll be treated with indifference by the staff.

When we complain about Americans being bossy and demanding, we're often secretly in awe of them for standing up for their rights.

Kathnora

Fair point, coylemj! I definitely agree with you re their confidence in speaking up and not being content with a second rate service. BUT, they can still be OTT with complaints on Tripadvisor....e.g. "the shower head wasn't strong enough" "the pillows were too hard/soft/small etc" So, sometimes imo, they get so used to complaining that they nearly look for something to complain about. I have seen some of them get very irate at hotel reception desks over trivial issues so much so that it has to interfere with their enjoyment of their holiday. Me....yes I have let things go rather than complain but they really haven't been serious issues and if you get into conflict over things that really don't spoil your stay too much then you only end up ranting and raving about them with your partner and your holiday ends up being ruined! Holidays are too precious to allow that to happen.

Ardennes1944

I find it a great resource to be honest. I leave honest and fair reviews and I believe most others so the same. Hasnt let us down with hotels so far anyway in fairness

Steelydanman72

I work in the industry but come in peace. My best advice for getting the best out of online reviews is to follow the general trend of a property. If they're largely positive the the property should be ok. If they're largely negative regarding service I terms of service, food and cleanliness then that should form your opinion for you. Another thing, read the full review. If its a bad review don't let the byline fool you. A lot of bad reviews can be quite subjective on the basis of one aspect of the hotel. Finally, ignore bad reviews where the issue is one relating to particular staff member. These are generally personality driven issues and have little if no relevance to the quality of the property. Unless of course the manger bails into your to your room at five in the morning checking the radiator!!!

Steelydanman72

Please accept my apologies for my typing errors in the above post. iPads are not great for typing!!

byhookorbycrook

I am always amused by some posts that complain there was no air-con in a listed building or similar. They want to stay in a "castle" but don't see that real castles a) don't have lifts/heating/pools and b) want to stay in one for about €10. I'm a destination expert on trip Advisor and would only ever look at reviews from people who have posted a number of times.

SuperStarHoney

I find it's a great resource for planning a trip but frustrating at times also, some of the reviews are clearly plants.

I review myself and always try to give a balanced view, particularly in light of the amount I've actually paid for the hotel.

Like others have said, I pay much more attention to reviews from people with higher review counts. I think it would be great if you could personalise your setting or filter to only see ratings and reviews from posters with a minimum post count of 10.

Solair

I usually find if there's a large, consistent volume of negative or positive reviews on a particular hotel/attraction/place it's generally fairly accurate.
However, if it's just a few reviews, it's very hard to be sure.

I'd definitely second the advice that you should find other reviews by a particular poster to see if they're on the ball or totally over the top.

Also, with hotels you can find that you get a few bad reviews at a particular time which could have been down to renovations, rowdy guests being present or even a bad manager who's now gone.

It's all a matter of trying to identify trends on trip advisor. After a while, you start to read it in a more useful way.
It's mostly about seeing consistent trends of lots of negatives/positives.

Single reviews, unless you can be sure the reviewer is reliable, are usually fairly useless.

Also watch out for fake positive reviews! You get that lot too i.e. from people connected with a particular place / venue. That's why I would always search for other reviews by people who have written glowing reviews of a hotel that's getting consistently bad reviews from everyone else...

Daisy M

The first thing I look at is the traveller pictures if they look good then I go on to the reviews.