Trip Advisor - useful or a lawsuit waiting to happen?

its a very useful site

like everyone says you can see the nutjob reviews a mile off


its also useful because people take room photos and post them up which show a much more realistic view of what you get rather than the hotels own out of date or photoshopped pictures
 
The couch surfing website is a good place to talk to locals from an area, even if you don't plan on 'couch surfing', you can get good local information from people who live there :)
 
Used to book a hotel in London recently and found many useful replies from owners to people with problems, in most cases the hotel had tried to help but most people who complain want a freebie as an end result and there is no pleasing them

Be wary of Americans they always review rooms as tiny when infact most are fine

I hate ones like "the staff never smiled at me" I mean WTF is that!
 
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Favourite review I've found recently

Maybe ok if you like Indian food

It was the restaurant for the Upton Park Hotel and as we arrived in the evening, chose it. Offered ONLY Indian fare, and as it is our least favorite cuisine, we cannot judge its quality. Included standard English breakfast the next morning, though.
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Rated it 2 out of 5 because they decided to go to an indian restaurant and they don't really like indian food. Classic :D
 
Raymond Lin said:
Was reading this article today in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/jan/25/tripadvisor-duncan-bannatyne

To summerise, it basically suggest that some people on this planet is just plain too picky. They would rate the hotel 1 star because little things like the staff were dress in a way they do not approve.

For example, from a review on a hotel I recently stayed at, one reviewer put.



I am sorry??? I thought he stayed there on his own?

I mean I like the website, it is the GO TO site for travel, but I think it is also killing a lot of small businesses when someone being irrational put something utterly absurd up there. I mean if OCUK banned medical threads because the forum could be accountable for comments that lead to someone being injured, twitter users are accountable for their comments, why is Tripadvisor not accountable for unreasonable reviews?

Perhaps the way to use Tripadvisor is ignore the best and worst reviews, and look at the "mean" of the ratings and see where it lies.
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[TW]Fox;18316344 said:
Totally agree. Have often been nervously booking after awfully bad trip advisor reviews only to find the place is great...
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sorting the wheat from the chaff with trip advisor is a bit of an art.

You can usually spot the picky ones (like the poor bathroom privacy) and ignore.

I even ignore isolated incidents of poor service, its only when everybody finds the same thing you know to stay clear.

The photos they take for the reviews can be very helpful too. Much more informative than the photoshopped set up ones on the website.
 
Me and my girlfriend have stopped looking at Tripadvisor as it just makes booking anything that much harder. You have to ignore all the picky idiots on there, but saying that, it's really difficult. I mean, what if it is as bad as Doreen from Whitby says?! The seed of doubt has already been planted.

We booked a hotel in Thailand following a look on Tripadvisor that had mixed reviews, we were worried initially and only booked for a few days. When we got there it turned out to be amazing. We also took a moped around most of the island looking at the other hotels we had in mind and we reckon we got the best one for the price.

I just don't get people who moan about the way the towels are folded or how many teabags are on the kettle tray. Or retards that say stuff like "would have been 5 stars, but the receptionist had a wonky eye and looked at me funny so I'm only going to give it 3 stars."

I wonder how many perfectly good hotels have been overlooked because they had 1 review which was 1 star from some tool who locked himself in a bathroom?
 
Raymond Lin said:
why is Tripadvisor not accountable for unreasonable reviews?
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If you have a solution I'd love to hear it. It's far better to have everything, rubbish included and ignore the rubbish, than have everything passed through a fine tooth comb before it's accessible.

It's fairly easy to ignore the blatant rubbish. You notice trends for certain things, like if there's a consistent theme that the beds were dirty then you can start paying attention to it.
 
Just booked a 3 night stay in Venice, the hotel reviews all say the rooms themselves are wonderful, but the staff are rude. It's venice, in italy therefore they're italians duh!
 
my best trip advisor experience was:

"The food in this hotel was terrible, i will never be visiting cyprus again!"

take it with a pinch of salt i'd say.
 
Robbie G said:
If you have a solution I'd love to hear it. It's far better to have everything, rubbish included and ignore the rubbish, than have everything passed through a fine tooth comb before it's accessible.

It's fairly easy to ignore the blatant rubbish. You notice trends for certain things, like if there's a consistent theme that the beds were dirty then you can start paying attention to it.
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trip advisor remove anything that the owner complains about as unjustified iirc

that avoids any potential law suits.

"Take this down it wasnt fair"

"Trip Advisor : ok"

problem resolved.
 
I've always found that most of the bad reviews are writen by people who have only ever left 1 review.

They had a bad holiday and thought they would moan.

If someone have left 8/9 reviews and most are good, but 1 is bad I tend to take it more seriously.
 
[TW]Fox;18316344 said:
Totally agree. Have often been nervously booking after awfully bad trip advisor reviews only to find the place is great...
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This. Many times I've read good reviews, only to stumble on the few negative reviews that cast doubt in the mind.

Get there and the place is great :p
 
I stayed in a place with no windows, and metal from the bed digging into my back, stoner's smoking massive amounts of weed and making noise all night.

So then I realised, sleep deprivation? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED then also if one of the stoner's were to set the hostel on fire, I'll be fine because I'm too hardcore to die in a fire.

Booking a nice hotel is a waste of money unless you are either really sensitive or really rich
 
I'm with Ray & Fox on this, these days TripAdvisor is just confusing.

There's a restaurant in town which we go to ~12 times a year. Not once have I left feeling anything other than 100% satisfied. Yet there's reviews on there slagging off the food and service. I swear they're writing about the wrong place!

There's a hotel down in Cornwall we've been to a few times. Of all the hotels & restaurants I've been to I really would rank this as #1. Yet there's a single terrible review of it. I actually know the other side of this (and the guest was so rude to other guests and staff they were asked to leave), but if someone were to read the review.... :eek: :(.
 
I used it to make sure my holiday would be good to the Dominican Republic and it worked a charm, with the only negative review being an American saying there were to many steps (Across a 5* 8 swimming pool resort, whoda thunk it hurrrrrr). The place was amazing.
 
Some of the review I read for Tenerife were a great laugh someone rated the hotel 2* because a baby did a poo in the pool.

How this was the fault of the hotel ? :confused:

The hotel we stayed at said the reception was unhelpful and sullen yet we found them to be really helpful and quite happy in their jobs.
 
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