TripAdvisor - Do you use it?

[RB]

I use it and also post reviews. My negative reviews have been posted. From emails I get from Trip Advisor it seems a lot of Indian people read the reviews I wrote of various spots we visited there.

 

[Sprucegoose]

TripAdvisor is such a well known site but am wondering do the AFF folk use it? How do you use it? For what particular purposes? How often do you use it?

I stay regularly in Renaissance Beijing Capital Hotel and they treat me like a king - so I posted a 'glowing' review on TA which appeared next day.

I stay 3 or 4 times each year at Le Royal Meridien in Shanghai only because of its location but this hotel 'never delivers' - so I wrote a 'less than glowing' review which DID NOT appear - how do you trust their hotel reviews?

I posted one for the Best Western Kelowna for a stay on the 26th Dec and haven't seen that posted as yet.

 

[blackcat20]

I've started posting reviews in the last year, but before that i used it to check out hotels to make sure I knew what I was getting. Also good for finding restaurants in cities where you aren't so familiar with what's available...

 

[PaulST]

TripAdvisor is such a well known site but am wondering do the AFF folk use it? How do you use it? For what particular purposes? How often do you use it?

I stay regularly in Renaissance Beijing Capital Hotel and they treat me like a king - so I posted a 'glowing' review on TA which appeared next day.

I stay 3 or 4 times each year at Le Royal Meridien in Shanghai only because of its location but this hotel 'never delivers' - so I wrote a 'less than glowing' review which DID NOT appear - how do you trust their hotel reviews?

I've reviewer >100 places on TA and find it a fairly useful tool although I'm warey of two things.
1) If the review seems inappropriately positive and they can't think of anything negative to say, be careful. If they've only reviewed one place, or a small number of places, also be warey as there are companies out there who you can pay to give you positive reviews and I suspect these are their work. Only give credit to reviews where the author has posted multiple reviews.
2) Be careful of people who are too positive. People can get caught up in being on holidays and give glowing reviews of utter cough. Again, check the average rating of the reviewer and see what their general vibe is.

Also, all of my negative reviews have been published. I'm just about to finish a trip through China and there have been some doozers who'd describe themselves as a hotel. Fortunately my current hotel (Charms hotel quite close to the bund is quite pleasant).

 

[Cruiser Elite]

I stay 3 or 4 times each year at Le Royal Meridien in Shanghai only because of its location but this hotel 'never delivers' - so I wrote a 'less than glowing' review which DID NOT appear

Re-posted review yesterday and it appears online this morn - maybe glitch first time - who knows.

 

[Maca44]

I use Tripadvisor mainly as a search engine for the area in which I wish to stay. I look at all the options, then usually go to the hotels website to see what differs, if any, from that which is posted on Tripadvisor. I have only posted reviews for two hotels I stayed with in the USA a couple of months ago, and I used those hotels mainly due to location of airports SEA and ORD, and they were great for that and I obtained this info from other reviews on Tripadvisor. I agree that a lot of the reviews are well over the top, and I suspect there may be some untruthfulness involved or possibly employees of the hotel in question. I think it is a good tool for research so long as you weed out the very positive reviews. In saying that, some hotels do deserve five stars.

 

[YNWA]

Trip Advisor is part of my research when planning holidays (a perpetual thing as I start planning as soon as I am back from one). In a similar vein to previous posts, I tend to ignore single post reviews and like the fact that reviews are separated into families, couples, business, etc. I've also PM'd reviewers to get more of a background of resorts that I plan to visit, especially where they seem to have similar likes and dislikes to me. The user submitted pics are also very handy to put the resort website ones into perspective. All in all I've posted something like 30 reviews to put something back in what is a great travel resource and all my reviews, good and bad, have been posted.

 

[Travelqueen]

I use TA as a tool also. I make it a part of my research, and as others have mentioned, I ignore the one hit wonders.

However, you can't please some people who their complaints are quite trivial.

I also like to see the amateur photos, as it's more "real"

TQ

 

[Flying mermaid]

I've reviewer >100 places on TA and find it a fairly useful tool although I'm warey of two things.
1) If the review seems inappropriately positive and they can't think of anything negative to say, be careful. If they've only reviewed one place, or a small number of places, also be warey as there are companies out there who you can pay to give you positive reviews and I suspect these are their work. Only give credit to reviews where the author has posted multiple reviews.
2) Be careful of people who are too positive. People can get caught up in being on holidays and give glowing reviews of utter cough. Again, check the average rating of the reviewer and see what their general vibe is.

Also, all of my negative reviews have been published. I'm just about to finish a trip through China and there have been some doozers who'd describe themselves as a hotel. Fortunately my current hotel (Charms hotel quite close to the bund is quite pleasant).

Sometimes all the reviews are over the top and glowing because the place really deserves it - e.g. Singita Sasakwa where I almost cried when it was time to leave it was so beautiful (mind you the price matches the perfection).

My pet hate are honeymooners - they are in such a glow of happiness and generally staying in accommodation that is way out of what they can normally afford, that everything seems wonderful to them. At the other end are people who are have decided to stay somewhere special as a treat, but are really stretching themselves, so have totally unrealistic expectations. Usually easy to spot these ones and heavily discount what both types say

This thread reminds me that I am way behind on my reviews and need to make myself do a few a day to catch up. I actually don't like writing reviews, but feel that I get such value out of trip advisor I should contribute....

 

[ellen10]

I use TA as a tool also. I make it a part of my research, and as others have mentioned, I ignore the one hit wonders.

However, you can't please some people who their complaints are quite trivial.

I also like to see the amateur photos, as it's more "real"

Yes I agree with the above quote.
I also post reviews of places to share with others as I appreciate information others have posted before me.

I read several different review places before I book something and have been very happy with my choices and research.

 

[codash1099]

I use TripAdvisor quite a bit and also contribute regularly. However it does need to be used the right way and is certainly not the oracle. I usually select where I want to stay, look for choices on the various web sites and then use TA to double check my choices. I mainly rely on the distribution from Excellent to Terrible and only then check individual reports. They are the least reliable part of the site (apart from my own contributions!!)

 

[Bolthead]

I use TA all the time and post the odd review. Recently I did a review for the Shanghai Sofitel and made a negative comment regarding the checking out time. It took over 20 minutes to check out. I didn't get a response on TA but I did get an email fro the General Manager asking me to expand on the experience which I was happy to do. (It was my only negative comment)

As others have mentioned the trick is to weed out the one off's and look for themes in issues that may occur. Although not TA the other day I was looking a Cruise Critic and checking on one of the Prncess ships (that we are booked on it March) and there was a common theme amongst the psters regarding the entertainment on board.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I use it all the time for accommodation and restaurants. I don't take tooooo much notice of the top tier ( written by the provider or contacts ) or the bottom tier ( written by the opposition ).
Learn to read between the lines and its a very helpful site.

This.

TA is also very valuable for mentioning things both good and bad that the hotel's site misses:
>That noisey club/pub or road (but say a room on one side may be good to ask for)
>That while the hotel my be only 100m from the beach in a straight line, that the only way to reach it is via the actual roads which is then 1 km (or vice versa there may be a handy short cut)
> Access to public transport or not
> Number and quality of nearby restaurants/ bakeries etc
> What are the average rooms and views like (and not just the selected pics on the hotels website)

Plus what we ALL like in accommodation is different and TA is good in filling in the blanks for what you like, but which another may find unimportant or annoying: gym, pool, type of guests, breakfast buffet, quality of coffee, is it juts a bed or a resort? etc

 

[scwappy]

Use it extensively to narrow hotel and restaurant lists down to something manageable to review in more detail. Have to take comments on board from 'whiners' and discount. Eg went to a great restaurant in PNH yesterday and some had moaned the location was too far away and gave it a bad review for this.... Go figure

 

[Gogo65]

I also use TA, both to review and also for research, I ignore any reviews where they reviewer has less than 10 posts, so far it has been good to me, with most hotels well chosen. One in Paris that got rave reviews, we had some real issues, although our friends did not, I put an average review on TA, and was contacted by the hotel for further information, I have been offered a discount to return, I will be returning to paris in a few months but will stay elsewhere, not that it was bad but there are plenty more to choose from, if we had a good stay no doubt we would be back, but time to pick something new.
i just stayed at the Sheraton four points darling harbour yesterday, I have previously reviewed this hotel, despite my reviews still has coughpy towels, will make a comment about their towels yet again, but love it other than that!!

 

[Mattg]

I'm a fan of TripAdvisor. Although I don't generally use it to choose a hotel, once I have found one and am looking at booking I will usually check the TA reviews. As a way of giving back, I always review hotels & hostels I have stayed in (as well as various other things). I now have 200+ reviews.

I have only had one issue with TA - booked a hostel in Istanbul a few months ago which had quite a few glowing reviews on TA but it turned out to be awful. On further investigation, we discovered that most of the glowing reviews were written by people with 1 review and all had very, very similar spelling and grammar issues. I then looked on Hostelworld and the site was full of reviews with a similar issue - dozens of 100% reviews written by people with 1 review and they all had the same grammar/spelling mistakes. I knew something was up when a "female from Australia" couldn't spell basic English words correctly. I highly suspect that the owner of the hostel, who I thought was quite dodgy anyway, wrote all of these reviews. I sent feedback to both TA and Hostelworld; within a week, the suspect TA reviews were removed. The reviews on HostelWorld, however, are all still there...

Generally speaking though, I think TA is a useful resource and all of my reviews, including negative ones (of which there aren't many, thankfully) have been published.

 

[pauly7]

Don't really trust reviews from the great unwashed

I go on Tripadvisor to look at photos of properties that's it!

 

[Denali]

Yes I use and put reviews and photos on TA.

Kudos to Novotel Sydney Olympic Park, I neg reviewed our room with photos and they tracked me down via room number and we were offered a free suite for an event night later that year (rack rate was $500+ that night), with welcome fruit basket no less.

Pullman Olympic Park also recently came to the party with a free dinner because of a few tiny issues we had with our last stay.

I do like when the business reps respond to reviews.

 

[get me outta here]

Do they find you by matching the room info and dates? Or, is it not as anonymous as it should be by some other 'route'?

Yes I use and put reviews and photos on TA.

Kudos to Novotel Sydney Olympic Park, I neg reviewed our room with photos and they tracked me down via room number and we were offered a free suite for an event night later that year (rack rate was $500+ that night), with welcome fruit basket no less.

Pullman Olympic Park also recently came to the party with a free dinner because of a few tiny issues we had with our last stay.

I do like when the business reps respond to reviews.

 

[andye]

I do post reviews mainly to thank for introducing me the Traveller IQ map game. Linking the Amex card prompts me to do more than I might otherwise.