Most travelers are skeptical of user-generated hotel reviews

This is just common sense, isn’t it? Everything you read on the web you should approach with an open mind and take an analytical approach.

With some TripAdvisor reviews, you don’t even need to read much between the lines – some reviews contain such petty observations you know that they’re written with a red mist and are, at best, unreliable. For example, one hotel I was researching had a review which – amongst other complaints – speculated that he might have seen a woman in the hallway who could have been a prostitute, which was then spun out into a ‘what sort of hotel turns a blind eye to cascades of hookers’ complaint. Clearly, an unreliable witness.

Hotel reviews are like any other review; the value in them lies in how much store you set by the reviewer.

I use TripAdvisor and Google reviews quite a bit – with some filtering.
Glowing reviews that start off with “we were comped an ocean front suite for our entire stay” are going to be a bit prejudiced, as are “I paid on Priceline and was treated rudely and put in the back with a dumpster view”. I also skip any review with complaints about the cost of parking or internet services.

I do look for reviews that include traveler’s photos. An ocean view room that is 95% parking lot with a small sliver of blue to the far right is really evident in a photo. On the flip side, complaints of ‘cramped quarters’ with a photo that displays a fairly typical New York hotel room can show me that the poster probably doesn’t travel to large cities very often.

I think your headline is wrong. Most travelers find user-generated hotel reviews interesting and worthwhile…and are smart enough to realize there are frequent attempts to game the system.

I think less of hotels that do this. They don’t trust the independent reviews so they have to try to skew the balance…which only makes me think they’ve got something to hide. Do they really believe the “our people our great, our facilities are amazing” messages sound credible when the vast majority of reviews say otherwise?

Tripadvisor is my travel bible and I usually select a hotel based on its user reviews. I have never been disappointed in this strategy. Nevertheless, I do read a lot of the reviews to get a feel for their “truthiness” as other commenters do. Some things that people complain about: fitness center, spas, concierge services don’t concern me as I don’t use them. It also gives me the confidence to book obscure small places that I might otherwise overlook (shout-out to Gobi Pension in Bergama, Turkey). Everytime I come back from a vacation, I pat myself on the back for having picked great places based on Tripadvisor. And I am not associated with TA in any way except as a big fan and contributor. I contribute reviews basically to give back–I benefit from the reviews I read and submit so others can get the benefit of my experience–good, bad or indifferent. TA does try to clamp down on fake reviews and like others, if I see the poster only has 1 contribution then I discount it. One thing I would like TA to clamp down on are the useless thank yous from management if somebody has a good time. They take up scrolling space and add nothing to my research.

I’m surprised that people would look askance at traveler reviews; I think they are the best way to find out about a property and certainly better than just looking at the hotel’s Website. Few newspapers or magazines actually review properties, although supposedly they have checked out the ones they mention in travel articles. I never book anything without checking it out on Trip Advisor, and it’s saved me from staying in some places that I’m sure I would have been unhappy with. I find that generally, reviews of a property are either overwhelmingly good, overwhelmingly bad, or neutral (just “OK”). Even when the reviews are mixed, there is usually a majority of either good or bad comments. You can always spot the cranky people (e.g., the ones who stay at a property off a major highway and complain that there is no view; the ones who actually expect to get a good breakfast at Days Inn), and I don’t pay attention to them. If it’s a two-sentence review (like, “This place is great! I’d come back!”), I disregard that too, because there are no details and it may have been posted by someone connected with the property. If you use the site often enough, you know how to weed out the nonsense.

I think the article captures the feelings of most travelers…look and compare. Owning vacation rentals and using same world wide, I am just plain skeptival of totally anonymous reviews regarding this industry. I read them, talk to owners, look intensely at websites and also use Facebook and the vacation rental portal http://www.secondporch.com to see if I know anyone or of anyone who has stayed at a property. I put much more faith into reviews/comments/suggestions when there is a real person behind them, rather than a cute “handle” that reveals nothing.

I post on TripAdvisor after I visit a hotel. I try to give an fair assessment of the pros and cons. In some reviews, I’ve written something as a “neutral” comment because it might be annoying to one type of traveler, but not another. Those I try to clearly point out. In some cases, it boils down to what type of traveler you are.

I think most comments are easy to determine whether they were written honestly and fairly. I’ve had decent luck using sites like TripAdvisor as long as I keep an open mind.

I always find myself reading those review ratings for hotels. But I’m not naive enough to believe everything I come across. I think in the end if you go to a hotel expecting a bad exprience and horrible service then thats what you will most like run into. Regardless of a great review of the hotel or not.

@Tom, the comments you posted had nothing to do with each other. A hotel can be very clean and yet not comply fully with local laws.

Personally, I do as the people above have mentioned, I read the reviews and see whatthe bad ones say and if they have a legitimate complaint. One review complaining about no hot water I would dismiss, but several and I would be worried. I’ve posted about a hotel before that was a total dump and I had stayed there 3 times. Each time confirmed the bad image I had and so finally I wrote a review and covered every detail. Shortly after a “family” from New Zealand supposedly stayed there and wrote a review suggesting it was a 5 star hotel. If hotels want to manipulate ratings, they should do so in a less obvious manner. (though the glowing reviews amidst a pile of “this place is a dump” ones are pretty comical)

Just a follow up, but I have reviewed this hotel before. Stayed there a few times and also have visited the bar they have at the hotel as well as attended parties thrown there. Its so easy to spot the fake ones, thought you guys would get a kick out of it. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g50133-d95203-Reviews-Airport_Plaza-Brook_Park_Ohio.html

We use user generated reviews on websites like Trip Advisor or Booking.com to do research for our website, Darn Good Digs, as well as for our own travels. But like most respondents in the survey and in these comments, we use them as a source of information – but not the definitive source. What we find particularly useful about these reviews is that they provide information about smaller properties that are otherwise missed in guidebooks or more traditional sources. Only through the collective power of millions of travelers could we possibly get reviews on nearly every b&b, guest house, hotel, or pousada around the world! We think user generated reviews can be a powerful research tool – as long as they are used wisely.

I work for a hotel that’s had some issues with TA. We do not allow anyone under the age of 21 to check into a room as we have a bar on property and have a zero tolerance policy for underage drinking and have refused to check in groups of young adults with one person in the group being 21 with the rest being 18-19. We cater to mostly business travellers and families and have gotten mostly very good to excellent reviews on TA.

About 8 months ago we had a group of young adults try and check in. There were 8 of them with one being 21 and the rest of them being 18-19. They also had about 6 cases of beer and about 12 bottles of liquor with them that they had loaded onto a luggage cart. We refused to check them in and they made a big stink about it as they according to the oldest in the group “just wanted a place to party”. Another hotel in the area took them and they ended up all being arrested after the other hotel called the police to break up the party they threw in the room.

About a week after this happened we started getting alot of bad reviews on TA which were posted by people who had just registered that week with the review being their first one. The reviews were ovious BS. There were things like “we had refused to check in a mother and baby at 2 am when they had a reservation”, “we kicked out a 76 year old woman at 1am for making to much noise”, “there were roaches all over the room” and other stuff like that. Our hotel is a 3 1/2 star property with managment that would never allow anything like that to happen. We contacted TA and explained the situation and it took them about a week to remove the 45 reviews like that that were posted. We have every reason to believe that the group we refused to check in was behind this and it was done out of retaliation.

As a result of this I take TA reviews with a grain of salt. I look to see what the ratings of most of the reviews are and how long the person has been a TA member before I make my decision.

I think the key is to read sites like Trip Advisor but take individual reviews with a grain of salt. A lot of complaints are easy to dismiss if I don’t care about them (for example, complaining that the onsite restaurant I probably wasn’t going to eat at anyway was bad, or that the bar closed too early). I also think a lot of people give bad reviews to cheap hotels because they’re expecting a Hilton room on a Super 8 budget. I’ve stayed at perfectly adequate Motel 6 and Super 8 properties that got bad reviews because another traveler found a speck of dirt in the bathroom or something like that.

I mostly pay attention to comments about the safety of the surrounding neighborhood (though again, you have to take it with a grain of salt) and about big issues like bugs.

I look for number of stars (at LEAST 4) and number of reviews (say, at least 10 or so). I generally ignore the best reviews (might be posted by hotel staff, or else by Pollyanna types who tend to love everything everywhere). Then I look at the worst reviews and their specific complaints. Some complaints tend to be about things I don’t care about. Others you can tell are just from people who are anal-retentive nit-pickers. I pay attention to the date of the review, also to the origin of the poster (Europeans have different standards than Americans, for example). I follow up by looking at the hotel’s website and get a feel for what the rooms are like and whether they’re worth the cost, whether the location is convenient, etc. If a place has a much lower price than the general market I tend to be skeptical. I’ve been using Trip Advisor as my main resource for probably 4-5 years on multiple trips (domestic and international). I spend a good bit of time and don’t make quick decisions. Using this method I can say I’ve really never been disappointed with my choices. I also have to say I prefer this site over “professional” reviewers such as Frommer’s and Fodor’s because the pros also tend to only stress the good, never tell you about the bad, and prefer more expensive properties.

The real problem with user reviews is that people’s experiences and expectations vary so much, and the review sites don’t provide a way to indicate what sort of room they had.  

Many hotels have a variety of very different rooms.  Someone who is given a suite is going to rave about the room, while at the same property another guest hates his dank closet; yet their reviews won’t mention what sort of room they had.