TripAdvisor Review

TripAdvisor is a neat site that's well worth checking before you book a hotel anywhere. It has a good message board in its Forums area, and it's strong point is it's immense database of reviews.

The downside of TripAdvisor is the same as that of most "Web 2.0" sites: basically, most people writing the content usually don't know what they're talking about. People write reviews without bothering to see the whole picture. There's no balance to reviews, and there's no consistent standards. The end-results are often ludicrously predictable. They do make sense sometimes, but its a crap shoot. In some towns, you see the "Number 1 choice" being a low-end chain motel whose best feature is its free breakfast of "deliciously crunchy" day-old donuts, while in another, a fabulous luxury resort gets slammed because their $99 rate is "way overpriced for the market".

Another big problem with TripAdvisor is the classic Web 2.0 problem of noise vs. signal. There *ARE* some good, intelligent thoughs on TripAdvisor. The problem is that for every intelligent review, there are dozens of 1-line postings like this gem: "i went thayre n itt wuz so good" Ummm. Yeah. Now there's an endorsement I can trust.

I wish there were more destination articles, and more reviews that conveyed some JOY of travel. TripAdvisor is MOSTLY about hotels, and there's far too many ringing endorsements of boring cookie-cutter discount chain properties and FAR too few that really seek out unique properties that make the trip worth taking.

By all means, read tripadvisor --- they claim to have over 15 million travel reviews. There's a few nuggets in there, but consider their source. I'm a totally average kind of guy, and that means tripadvisor has more than 7-1/2 million reviews that were written by people stupider than me. Yep, there's gonna be a lot of sludge to wade through!!

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WARNING!!

Tripadvisor has recently implemented automated filters to detect "false" reviews. Unfortunately, these are EXTREMELY flawed filters that remove MANY real reviews --- including those from long-time members who are clearly NOT abusing the system or spamming friends & slamming competitors (a legitimate problem with many review sites). There are numerous incidents of real travelers writing real reviews only to see them taken down by the Tripadvisor autobots. Suspisciously, these seem to most often be negative reviews.

DO NOT TRUST TRIPADVISOR!

Adding to Tripadvisor trust issues is the fact that Tripadvisor now lets companies post rebuttals to reviews. Occasionally this is warranted because Web 2.0 sites being what they are, many boneheads post really stupid reviews. This is a problem with all review sites, but I'm not comfortable with a review site that's too cozy with vendors and that doesn't use better, smarter community-policing methods.

Do *NOT* trust Tripadvisor anymore! (rating going down appropriately)