Trip Advisor

[animalwilliams]

Just read that a Ramada Hotel manager in Glasgow has been found to be encouraging or ordering  his own staff to write positive reviews of their own hotel. Is this a one off or are lots of positive reviews on this site fake?

[Flashheart]

If I owned/managed such a business, writing up fake reviews would be one of the first things I do.

[4D]

What a stupid question! This deserves to go in the 4D Q&A forum

[Saxondale]

Mate, its such a pile of shit. 

Positive and negative reviews are false on that and the moderators of it do nothing about it.  If you go somewhere or do something on the recommendation of that site you are an idiot.

Anyone can write a review.  I could make up 20 seperate email addresses and slag off a business.  Those reviews will go up on the frontpage.  So any business owners can then look and go, shit I need to shift them Ill put up some good reviews. 

The businesses have no control and no come back on bad reviews.  My family have found people slagging off their business and followed it up to find it was a rival business doing it.  They reported it to trip advisor who refuse to do anything about it.

Seriously, it is less trustworthy than diamond mike.

[DMR]

Was it C4 who did a documentary on a load of mongoloids who were Trip Advisor "experts"...?

Good god the sap on there who went on holiday with his Gran made me want to stab myself

[Batch]

It can be useful, but I guarantee that every place (with 200+ reviews) on there will have at least one "awful" review and one "excellent".

It certainly ain't perfect.

[Paolo69]

Positive and negative reviews are false on that and the moderators of it do nothing about it.  If you go somewhere or do something on the recommendation of that site you are an idiot.

I'm an idiot then! Happy to be one though as have found some blinding restaurants and a couple of good hotels off the back of it which i would never have found otherwise.

Admittedly it is open to abuse but as you don't take every review too seriously and take a general overall picture then I've found it to be pretty useful.

[Ardiles]

It does have a use but, as others have said, don't take individual comments at face value.  If there are 50+ reviews, it's likely that the general trend of those comments is going to be a fair reflection of the hotel or restaurant.  If there are fewer reviews than that, I wouldn't place a lot of faith in them (either way).

[sonicyouth]

I'm an idiot then! Happy to be one though as have found some blinding restaurants and a couple of good hotels off the back of it which i would never have found otherwise.

Admittedly it is open to abuse but as you don't take every review too seriously and take a general overall picture then I've found it to be pretty useful.

Ditto

Used it numerous times to find a hotel and most of the time it's been spot on.

[Chubbs]

I'm an idiot then! Happy to be one though as have found some blinding restaurants and a couple of good hotels off the back of it which i would never have found otherwise.

Admittedly it is open to abuse but as you don't take every review too seriously and take a general overall picture then I've found it to be pretty useful.

Im the same, i use it all the time, i dont take it overly seriously as there are people who are not going to be happy with staying at the Ritz and give it poor feedback.

[Dozno9]

It's all about levels of expectation.

I went to a Beefeater type place when styaing away with work and I thought it was quite good yet one of my party was going boogaloo over the service and wanted his money back etc.

My review would have been quite good and his not, so take it all with a truck load of salt. If I do use it I try and find info out about the local environment and little experiences people have had which make you more aware of the pitfalls.

[mystical_goat]

Trip Advisor is a handy website. I reckon you can spot most of the fake reviews too.

[Nemo]

If there's a good amount of reviews on the site in question then I think it's worth considering. I tend to prefer reading the comments to just looking at numbers as often the reasons why people give something 1* or 5* might be completely irrelevant to me. Very useful for hints and tips as well on freebies and the like.

[Arriba]

I think you can get a good idea about a place with the site. Then looking on similar ones to compare has done me ok.

[Nick Bamosomi]

Im the same, i use it all the time, i dont take it overly seriously as there are people who are not going to be happy with staying at the Ritz and give it poor feedback.

Same here. And when I have visited said place, have found the majority of opinions pretty much in line with my own.