How much faith do you have in Tripadvisor?

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nobbie48

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Like any on-line site where the coments come from anonymous sources there is the creditability issue. Some people slam a hotel while others love it. People having different expectations is part of the problem but how do they weed out potentally bogus reports?
 
nobbie48 said:
Like any on-line site where the coments come from anonymous sources there is the creditability issue. Some people slam a hotel while others love it. People having different expectations is part of the problem but how do they weed out potentally bogus reports?
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Use your discretion? I know I've left reports on there, but only for hotels that seriously are horrible.
 
Take it with a grain of salt.

I always check out the resorts/places im staying via the website. What people complain about are laughable at best when dealing with resorts down south.

Its always " there was no wifi" or " the beds were too hard".

Really. WTF?
 
For the most part, they've been reliable. Much like reading advice on GTAM, you learn from people's writing style, prose, use of language, etc.

Take it all with a grain of salt, and remember, 20 years ago there wasn't the luxury of knowing too much ahead of time, so that surprise was part of the travels. Some like it, some don't. It was called 'experience'. :)
 
As many have pointed out, take it with a grain of salt and use your gut. If the complaints are idiotic, the reviewer is likely full of sheet.

if many reviews that have simuilar issues and these are show stoppers for you then exercise your best judgement.

We had a hotel booked in the Tampa area last summer, seemed like a good deal initially, but after reading additioanl reviews, we choose to cancel the booking, the reviews were quite horrific. Maybe they were bogus, but with enough of them that I wasn't going to chance it.
 
I pay attention to the reviews but I read them carefully. Usually if you weed out the extremes of each end and then look at what's left it's not too bad. There are some real diva-ish things on there though like "did not leave chocolate on pillow before bedtime-ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED WILL NEVER STAY AGAIN". Pretty sure there's a lot of shills and scam postings for some places especially restaurants though. Look at several review sites and if you get the same flavour of reviews on each you can be reasonably sure they are accurate. Check dates though, sometimes management has changed over time and that can mean big changes to the way a place is run.
 
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you can also check out the reviewer of the review to gauge the legitimacy of the review and how they've reviewed other places of stay. I like it how they show how many reviews some reviewers review because the ones that review just 1 place usually means someone is slamming their competition or had a really horrible experience to bother writing a review whereas the ones that write many reviews have a critical review of the places they've reviewed.
 
At stayed at a hotel in Niagara Falls once that offered $10 off the next stay if I left a positive review at tripadviser. I found their listing on trip adviser and sure enough they had a 99% rating despite being a cheap POS hotel.

I reported their rating rigging scheme to trip adviser, but I doubt they did anything about it.
 
Tripadvisor is a great site. I enjoy reading all the whiny complaints from people who expect top notch service in the perfect world they live in. I always keep in mind that people are always more inclined to write a complaint than those who had a perfect experience are to write a great review.
 
If you read the bad Reviews first you can always tell if the hotel is good. If people make stupid complaints about nothing issues you know the hotel is nice.
 
Rent a private property or charter a private yacht. You got no issues then.

Make your wife cook. Just because its vacation doesn't mean she gets to stop being a woman.


* done *
 
I trust it, for the most part. Although admittedly, I look at the "things to do" more than the accommodations section. You can usually tell from the post if the person's just being a Whiny Wanda and they're just being unreasonable.
 
See what people are complaining about. If it's stupid frivolous stuff that you don't care about, you'll probably be ok.

One time I ignored tripadvisor when I really shouldn't have, see the Shoreline Motel in Thunder Bay. I have never checked out so early in my life.
 
What regder said. Read what people are complaining about. Also look at total number of reviews and 1-5 distribution. We have been pretty much spot-on with 2 hotels that we picked in Cuba and in Dominican so far.
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