How TripAdvisor Changed Travel | Hacker News Reader

How TripAdvisor Changed Travel

theguardian.com

113 pointsjjar87 comments

I do a lot of traveling. My experience improved dramatically when I stopped using TripAdvisor and similar apps. I just go with the flow. Talk to real people. Like a bunch of American tourists (insert any country here) would know what, say, authentic Thai food is supposed to taste like. It all comes down to a bunch of -at best- uninformed people ranking stuff, at worst fake reviewers, bots and scammers. Why would I want that?

The worst part is that now if I don't want to look at their stupid logo, it's not enough to uninstall the app. They are everywhere. Restaurants and hotels begging for you to rank them positively, lest you enrage the child gods and send their business into ruin. Beautifully serene temples disgraced by a 15 foot high real life Tripadvisor logo to commemorate that they made it into the top 10 that year. A temple going back more than one thousand years, with trees and rock and the shitty green and black TripAdvisor logo ruining everything. It made me very sad.

The trick which hasn't failed me yet is to look at exclusively 1-star reviews. I've been using Google Maps, and I'm assuming this trick will work with other services also. First, look at the ratio of 1-star to other reviews - do the 1-star reviews create a "hockey stick"? What's the ratio of 1-star to 2-star? 1-star to all reviews?

Second, see what people are complaining about, for example, these 2 1-star reviews reveal vastly different experiences:

Cafe: Horrible staff and horrible food. The owners wife argues with the customers, over charges and makes sure to let you know shes overworked and exhausted. We paid over a 100 dollars on lunch for 4 people. One of those orders was on a childs menu. The resturant is very neat looking and has the potential to be successful. They need a new cook and new staff. Its clear everyone hates their jobs.

Pub: We picked this place based on the high reviews. I specifically wanted to dine here for the crab cakes. I'm fairly certain there wasn't crab in them since they where mostly batter. The flavor was lacking and the aoli was gross. I didn't say anything and should have. I just left and I'm still hungry. Price is extremely high too. Needs new menu.

These restaurants are within 5 miles of each other. As the second review was entirely about the food, it's safe to say there were no service, billing, parking, or other issues - especially since other reviews back this up. And food ratings frequently reflect preference - maybe I would enjoy the crab cakes. So the second establishment would get my business.

But yes, there's no source quite like the opinion of a local, directly from their mouth. Even better than the above system is to find a bar/pub/coffee shop/etc where the locals go, and ask them how things are going in the area.

During my travels I was definitely surprised at first just how effective that buying a beer for someone sitting next to you at a pub is for getting all sorts of information. It's definitely the cheapest investment you can make into having a great time abroad.

That depends on what kind of person you are. I could never do it. And if a stranger would come to offer me a beer I would be surprised and annoyed, and if he wouldn't stop pestering me I would quickly leave.

It's also a cultural thing, I don't think I'm that far from the norm here. We just don't do this.

It's funny that this is your take on those two reviews, because my initial reaction was exactly the opposite: I would weigh the pub review more highly. In general, I have found that people (especially Americans) tend to vastly over-exaggerate service issues at restaurants, and it's always unclear from those kinds of reviews whether this was just a one-time thing or something systemic. Plus, I'm not sure how it's possible to tell that "everyone hates their jobs" from one visit. On the other hand, someone saying that the crab cakes were "mostly batter" is a pretty objective observation about the food (you know, the most important part of going out to eat) that I can use to make my decision.

Either way though, I think we're mostly in agreement about how to find good places to eat.

> It's funny that this is your take on those two reviews, because my initial reaction was exactly the opposite: I would weigh the pub review more highly.

And I weighed the pub review more highly as well. And the pub has locals raving from 30 miles away. Nobody knows about the cafe; I went in once and it was completely empty, so I went to the McDonald's that had a few customers.

This is a good point - sites like notalwaysright.com have what are to this British person's eyes utterly jaw-dropping accounts of US businesses bending over backwards to accommodate idiotic, rude or blatantly dishonest customers, who would basically be told to bugger off if they tried their histrionics here.

I have a different trick, I filter out English reviews on Tripadvisor and favor heavily places with good Japanese reviews.

I find that my tastes in term of food align with Japanese (and in a smaller measure French and Italian) customers whereas British and Americans tend to have very different tastes than me.

Interestingly too, Japanese customers tend to be stricter in their ratings (this can be seen in Tabelog in Japan where 3.6 is a really good score for a restaurant).

As another commenter said, I'd come to the opposite conclusion. I always discount service related complaints as I rarely if ever experience service so bad that I'd not come back. Often you'll see people complain about a long wait or something on the menu not being in stock.

I only look at food quality and restaurant cleanliness reviews and it works out pretty well. If multiple people are saying a place is dirty, I'll avoid it at all costs. People talking about greasy, old... food is also a pass. Most of the time when people complain about service I feel they have weird expectations or lack skills for properly interacting with the staff.

Yes, I do that too: last year I explicitely checked potential vacation hotels for "terrible and lacking entertainment" because I wanted a quiet hotel. Had a great stay in an adult-only hotel without any entertainment at all, exactly what I wanted. So yeah, looking at bad reviews can provide a lot more information that most people think.

Oh this is interesting. Someone more code-inclined than me should build a review scraper (if it doesn't exist already).

>enter business

>scrapes reviews

>pulls out most mentioned phrases and can filter common ones like "great", "awesome", etc

>specifically highlight the negative reviews that DON'T mention the certain things you care about.

Agree, the 1 star reviews on Google maps are usually pretty accurate at describing what the problems are.

I agree that Tripadvisor is useless for restaurants, but how do you find/book hotels? In general hotels are more expensive when booked directly and not through an aggregator, however, how do you even find them without sites like Tripadvisor?

The big US chains are always cheaper directly (Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Wyndham/Choice). Use roomkey.com and you can search them all at once. This is because the brands own room key so they don't pay commission so pass on some of the savings to you.

You can also contact a hotel directly and say you're thinking about reserving on so and so website (aka travel agent), and if you reserve directly, they might give you a discount for not having to pay commission.

I find there is a problem here - hotel chains "sell" some of their room-nights (#) to the third party channels. I think it works like options - but it means I phone the hotel to book a room i can see is available on all these third party sites (including trip advisor) but the hotel cannot sell that room-night to me because the channel has first dibs.

which seems like the hotel is cutting off its own nose

(#) notnsure of the industry term but you get the idea

None of the big US brands do that. They each have a best price guarantee that gives you a free night or 50% off or something if you are able to reserve for cheaper than on their official website.

The only thing they might engage in is opaque pricing, which is Priceline and hotwire auction. But that is different since it's not a publicly advertised price, the buyer puts in how much they want to pay and they are stuck with whatever hotel Priceline or hotwire give them.

But reputable hotels don't resort to that since that attracts price sensitive guests that aren't desirable anyway, such as prostitutes and drug dealers.

> But reputable hotels don't resort to that since that attracts price sensitive guests that aren't desirable anyway, such as prostitutes and drug dealers.

Maybe at the 1 or 2 star level, but every other hotel on the planet secretly loves the price discrimination that Priceline and Hotwire offer.

You won't see a $1400/night boutique hotel on there, but a $300/night place will offload for half the price if they're relatively unbooked.

I think the idea is they get an acturay to estimate how many rooms will be empty at some future date, and sell the room-nights they estimate they couldn't fill anyways to 3rd party channels. This way, they at least recoup some money on empty rooms and why Priceline can offer rooms that are much lower than what booking directly at the hotel costs.

I'd be shocked to find out any hotel uses an actuary. The big ones have sales teams dedicated to booking groups and events, and the smaller ones are usually franchised and managed by a small staff. Most brands use h inventory management software too that auto updates pricing based on prior years' performance and how quickly rooms are renting (or canceling), much like airline ticket prices.

In a lot of cases, the trip booked through the aggregator blocks you from collecting loyalty points from the chain.

Yes, but not roomkey.com since it's just owned by the hotel brands and is not commissionable.

Good to know, thanks!

> In general hotels are more expensive when booked directly and not through an aggregator

This is because the aggregators have "most favored nation" clauses in their deals with hotels that forbid hotels for undercutting the aggregator's prices, either on their own site, or on other aggregators.

One of the workarounds is that these clauses don't apply to customers with whom the hotels have a preexisting relationship, which is why you can sometimes get better rates by just signing up for a loyalty program, and searching a hotel's own site while logged in using that program. Another is that amenities aren't necessarily covered in that agreement, so it's possible that you can book the same room for the same price on the hotel's own site, but get later checkout, a free breakfast, cheaper parking, or whatever.

Look for a hotel on maps.google.com. There 90% chance that the hotel is offering the same price as OTAs. Book directly on the hotel site, and use their reward system to get points.

Most of the hotel offers the same rate as OTA. We - Hotel owner can't offer a cheaper rate than OTA.

I've found that some perks, like free cancellation, is only available on the hotels' sites for significantly more than OTAs. Also my CC gives me a 10% on some OTAs.

You will find two different prices on many hotels websites. A discounted prepaid non refundable price, and a flexible price allowing you to cancel up to a certain deadline. Works just like airlines.

I've been traveling for the past few years (40+ countries) and overall I'd say Booking.com works very well and has much better-controlled reviews (be sure to actually read them for details). AirBnB can work well and is my preferred style, although a lot of place have been cracking down on them lately.

Hotels allocate a portion of rooms for sites like agoda, trip advisor, etc. And keep a small portion for direct bookings and walk ins.

The price is almost always cheaper when booked direct or onsite than it is through a 3rd party. That’s cos the cut these people take is upwards of 15-30%. Hotels are literally forced to pay this because if they don’t they don’t get business. Under cutting the websites for going direct allows them to get more profit.

If you ever try book a hotel and it says there’s no rooms avaliable. There’s a good chance you can get a room by going direct.

There are benefits to using the 3rd party which is refunds and cancelations. A lot of hotels don’t offer refunds at all or have conditions on refunds and cancelations. The 3rd party sites handle the refunds themselves tho.

It goes both ways: As you get closer to the booking time, if the rooms that the third parties have allocated aren't mostly booked, they generally start to drop prices in order to fill the inventory (I'm assuming because they have paid for the rooms in advance), whereas I have never seen a hotel do this directly. I have gotten some great deals from booking last-minute through sites like Agoda where the price was significantly lower than it would have been going through the hotel directly.

True, deals exist everywhere if you're willing to look.

> how do you even find them without sites like Tripadvisor?

Stay in hostels. Many of them have private rooms in addition to dorms. Ask the other travelers and hostel staff for recommendations. Book directly and help the hostels save money on the ridiculous commission fees. (It's usually cheaper too.) Don't plan too far in advance. If you travel outside of high season, finding accommodation isn't a problem.

And if you want more/better amenities than a hostel has to offer?

I guess it depends on where you're going and what you're looking for. Many hostels have private rooms that are comparable to hotels, but with more opportunities to meet people. They aren't for everyone though.

http://www.soulkitchenhostel.com/upload/iblock/9e1/9.jpg

https://www.czech-inn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DSC9192...

Uhh.. Google Maps? Kayak/Travelocity/Expedia/Orbitz/etc/etc?

If I'm staying near a business client or family I ask them. If they don't know I search. Then I see what's available on the booking sites.

Tripadvisor only ever came into the picture if I was visiting a resort area where I didn't know anyone.

> Kayak/Travelocity/Expedia/Orbitz/etc/etc

These are basically the same. They are all usually one of two companies:

    Booking Holdings
    
    * Booking.com
    * Agoda.com
    * Priceline.com
    * Kayak.com
    
    Expedia Group
    
    * Expedia.com
    * Orbitz.com
    * Travelocity.com
    * Wotif.com
    * Cheaptickets.com
    * Hotels.com (+ Venere, HotelClub)
    * egencia.com
    * Hotwire.com
    * Homeaway.com
    * VRBO.com
    * Remainder of Homeaway Network (~5 more sites)
    
    Independent-ish
    
    * TripAdvisor (former Expedia spinoff)
    * Trivago (former Expedia spinoff)
    * Hipmunk (Conde Nast/Reddit)
    * Ctrip.com (China)
    * Despegar.com (Brazil)
    * MakeMyTrip.com (India)
    * GetARoom.com
    * Google Hotels/Flights

I thought Google hotels/flights used the OTAs, but instead of the OTAs making 13-18% commission, Google leaves them with 3-8% taking 10% themselves (Which no affiliate of the OTAs has ever gotten close to that high of % before)

How about ClearTrip (mostly interesting in India, but they also have some non-Indian hotels)? Who are they owned by?

(Disclaimer: I work in the travel industry.)

What you want to do is search on these sites and then book at the actual business's sites. Even if the fares are different, it's worth it.

Ever had to try to get a flight/hotel/car changed or cancelled through Expedia or a similar site? Whatever savings you get from aggregator sites aren't worth it.

Ever had to try to get a flight/hotel/car changed or cancelled through Expedia or a similar site?

booking.com works well in that regard. When a room is cancelable and you cancel via the site it works at no cost and without hassle.

That said I have very mixed feelings about the service. For starters it's a parasitic business model, which is not very transparent or honest. I.e. places that pay higher comissions are more prominently ranked. Which is not obvious to the site user.

What's outright galling is their unfairness towards hotels. "CaptainZapp, prices in Sapporo just wen down!" after booking a hotel in Sapporo a few days in advance.

In addition to the spammy nature of such mails it's an outright lie. In that example the hotel was booked during golden week (first week in May when virtually all of Japan is on holiday) and hotel prices during golden week don't go down, ever!

It's dishonest and totally unfair towards the hotel, which I just booked.

This.

I travel extensively for work - and I direct book as much as I can, even avoiding our travel agent.

Depends. If the cancellation terms are advertised then its point and click and done and money back in a few days - no questions asked - hotels.com or agoda.com - do it regularly as plans changed. Most of direct hotels you have to email their reservation staff and go through the back and forth reasons to get something cancelled - which is a PITA/risk if cancellation time is 31 minutes away. It is true though if it's a non-cancellable deal you'll have more look if booked direct.

Ever tried to get a directy to match the OTA price, sure it can happen, then you get ++, or some shit forex they choose, or some other bullshit, it's not worth the hassle most of time. In addition when directy will sometimes match without hassle but then what about hotels.com 1 for 10 booking room free, or expedia points (about the same), I want that extra 7-8% (since you dont earn on free night) or whatever it is off too... good luck

With oversell too, very common in asia esp vietnam, they are more likely to move the direct booking to their sister/partner hotel rather than OTA booking, the moment you say that's not acceptable let me call agoda/hotels.com all of sudden some other punter booking is being moved...

I dont stay high end though (2-3 star) and in fairness I do recall hearing direct booking on chains get special benefits like airport pickups or breakfast but never a better rate than OTA since thats the terms of the large OTAs (never advertise a better rate than us)

YMMV

> Kayak/Travelocity/Expedia/Orbitz/etc/etc

Sorry, I should have been more specific. To me, all these sites are the same quality as Tripadvisor. I use them all, but I assumed someone who would avoid Tripadvisor would also avoid these sites.

> If I'm staying near a business client or family I ask them.

That's weird. If they already have a real place to stay in some place, why would they know anything about hotels?

> Tripadvisor only ever came into the picture if I was visiting a resort area where I didn't know anyone.

That's pretty much all the travel my family and I do these days.

You can also look to the niche travel blogs and websites. I usually browse Suitcase Magazine’s travel guides for where to eat/stay/see if I’m in a city they have covered. Have not been disappointed so far

I do read niche travel blogs and websites, but they very rarely cover lodging, unless it's some exotic destination with special lodging requirements.

Hostelworld... ok so I'm probably not the demographic you're looking for answers from.

However, Booking.com is by far the world's largest hotel booking website.

The main booking websites themselves, e.g. agoda.com or booking.com, their reviews at least are from people who definitely paid to stay...

Booking.com, Yelp and Tripadvisor are pretty much the same thing to me, and the same low quality. I use them all, but I was curios how would someone do without them.

booking.com used to work fine for me, at least in places I have any idea about.

TripAdvisor's restaurant ratings are objectively the worst I've seen as a local. Zomato is a lot more accurate since it's used by locals.

I'm fed up with TripAdvisor, Yelp and similar review sites. Too many of the negative reviews are off topic and they bring down the overall ratings (similar issue for positive reviews as well... people tend to rate things they love or hate, but not things in the middle). For example, Amazon is loaded with one-star reviews from people complaining that they received counterfeit items. This has nothing to do with the product itself and everything to do with a supply chain issue at Amazon (and more so its 3rd party merchants). Similarly, on TripAdvisor and Yelp, I regularly see one star reviews from people who have a specific issue and don't review hotels/restaurants on their own terms. For example, if you are a health nut, you really aught to not post a review of a BBQ joint to complain about lack of healthy options. Family taking a vacation? Don't post reviews of a hotel in the financial district that caters to business travelers because you are upset that they lack good facilities for kids. I highly prefer professional reviewers who have a breadth of experience and also know to review movies on their own terms. That's why I find the aggregated professional movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes more helpful than the crowd-sourced reviews on IMDB.

I think there's a solution that would help the problem a bit though. Have two tiers of reviewers. For example, on TripAdvisor, the first tier would include everyone, similar to what you have right now. Second tier would be an aggregated number by "gold" reviewers. To qualify, a gold reviewer would need to have:

- More than N number of reviews

- An individual review would only count if it was more than a minimum number of words

- Let users mark reviews as helpful or not helpful. A gold user will need to be above a threshold for percentage of helpful vs not helpful reviews, with a minimum number of helpful reviews.

Amazon already marks some reviewers as being, for example, a "top 1000 reviewer". What I'd like to see is for those top tier reviewers' reviews to be broken out as a separate score.

> That's why I find the aggregated professional movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes more helpful than the crowd-sourced reviews on IMDB.

That's exactly the analogy I thought of when I first saw TripExpert:

https://www.tripexpert.com

They aggregate professional reviews for hotels, restaurants, and things-to-do. The list, however, does skew heavily towards Michelin-star establishments, so it's not the site to find excellent hole-in-the-wall places.

is there a term to express our this era technology is just allowing useless noise to pass as signal ?

when myspace et al started to pop, web 2.0, dynamic webpage interactions was the fastest way to heaven, now it seems we read the map upside down.

ps: maybe we're rediscovering how mobs are bad

There is a great flattening in what it once took to publish a thought or an idea and have it reach an audience. Unfortunately almost everybody is deluded, insane, stupid, at the very least totally uninsightful - or some sort of weird combination of all these things.

The web is a great place to be uninformed or even deceitful, I strive to be cognizant of this.

I don't understand the last part of your comment. But I wonder hard almost weekly about that flattening effect of the computer era.

People (and I at times) complained how institutions were imposing too much on whatever content (articles, music, movies). Without their curating effect, everything goes. Some say it's better because now you're sure you'll never miss a great thing that would have been killed by some radio or studio. But I'm less and less convinced of that.

I was thinking about that part of my comment and I believe what I failed to convey was that there seems to be no real cultural or educational priority to question what you see communicated on the internet, at least to my limited understanding.

I think culture needs to hit the wall and then people will re-learn that tech is not a magic bullet.

Wouldn't that lead to vendors starting to buy off the "gold reviewers"?

Alternate.de, Amazon.de,… no idea how it is for the US equivalents, but on German sites I regularly see information about how bad or good the shipping was. Seriously? You are reviewing the product, not the store, your review is literally useless.

> That's why I find the aggregated professional movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes more helpful than the crowd-sourced reviews on IMDB.

Wow really? I stopped using RT and moved to IMDB, because critic reviews on RT are so bad.

Couldn't data from products like Uber or Google Maps solve this problem without need for any reviews?

Really strange to see the negative comments. My favorite thing about TripAdvisor is that I feel empowered when I have a terrible experience at a venue. I can just go leave them a crappy review. It's very cathartic.

Also, I find most of the reviews to be generally accurate. It sounds like other people disagree with that which is strange. I've never used TripAdvisor to find a restaurant or a hotel and then felt like the reviews were faked.

Maybe not faked, but they are curated. I had $400 USD stolen from a mechanic that worked at an establishment with an extremely high Trip Advisor rating. I didn't realize until days later and 1000's of miles away. I got on all the review sites and left reviews with my experience. Sure enough, within a week Trip Advisor had removed my post after initially approving it.

i think your story is a great example of why open review aggregation sites are a broken model.

these reviews are not comprehensive. a lot of people only go there to post about a shitty experience or out-of-this-world experience. it's also broken in situations where reviewers are not familiar with the culture or standards of the place they're visiting, i.e. critiquing the service/cleanliness/decor of an authentic hole-in-the-wall chinese restaurant.

Why would you not want to be aware of bad service or cleanliness in a restaurant?

because there's a different standard you should hold a street hawker to vs a high end restaurant.

to be clear, you should be paying attention to the tastiness of the food (usually comfort food) and the atmosphere of something like a street stand in asia, where you might comment on attention to detail and innovation at someplace like coi.

In my opinion, clean and not bad service is a standard every restaurant should be able to meet.

I look at TripAdvisor, Yelp, and other regional restaurant review sites. Tablelog is the only one with overall ratings that seem to reflect reality, but that's Japan only. Even though the big two are more noise than signal as far as reviews go, at least I can see pictures. Often I use these sites while sitting in the place to decide what to order. I'm starting to use Google Maps more because TripAdvisor and Yelp sites suck so bad and I refuse to install their low quality, spammy apps. What I wish existed:

- NO reviews. I want facts not opinions.

- Food photos only. No useless photos of people, random interiors, drinks, etc. Delete those and ban the idiots who upload them.

- Ruthlessly curate the photos. I want a couple of photos of each dish, only the best quality ones that are recent.

- Caption the photos and tag the food. I want the exact string on the menu neatly displayed on each photo. I want to be able to search "pizza" and get a stream of photos of the food.

- A clean set of photos of the menu so I can see the prices. OCR that into searchable text.

- Let me privately rate the food.

I guess what I'm describing is kind of Tinder for food. And no ads of course. Not gonna happen.. but hey I can dream.

> Food photos only. No useless photos of people, random interiors, drinks, etc.

I agree that photos of people are ridiculous, but I want photos of the interior. The ambiance of a place is even more important than the quality of the food (to me), and it's one of the attributes hardest to portray in reviews (mostly because people who review are not professional reviewers). Good photos help here.

Fair enough. What makes a good interior shot is more subjective. The idea with the food pics is that it's very easy to tell which photo of the same thing is better.

I think the big sites must know this and they could do it, but users who contribute might get discouraged if they throw out so many uploads.

Tips that have improved my travel experience:

1) Don't go to a "destination" city. Don't go to a city that derives too much of its income from tourism.

2) Trip length: not too long, not too short.

3) Make a loose itinerary, but rip it up occasionally.

4) Bring a phone, but no laptop. Don't use TripAdvisor/Yelp/etc. Ask around. Walk around. Have strange conversations. Don't be afraid to stay in non-traditional lodging.

5) Invest in a place before you go: learn some of the language, read a great book from the place, etc. This will make it much more interesting and memorable.

6) Don't go on trips just because your friends posted about their "amazing" vacations and you feel like you have to go, too. Travel sucks if the excitement doesn't come from within.

7) If you're on a limited budget, don't go to expensive cities and scrimp. It's no fun. Go to cheaper cities and splurge. Or have a blast and go camping with your friends a short drive away.

8) Get fit and dress nicely. Whether you like it or not, this is how people judge you. It's easier to be a good-looking guy/gal in a new place.

Happy travels! :-)

| 1) Don't go to a "destination" city. Don't go to a city that derives too much of its income from tourism.

This is good advice. Generally the "second cities" of a country gives a better experience. More open borders and intermixing has been wonderful, but it does mean that a lot of capital/primary cities feel very similar.

Great list; I would only add which kinda goes with (3), don't set your expectations too high - go with an open and exploratory mind, you might even discover new unexpected experiences.

At times we plan a trip based on what we've read or seen and have this picturesque and dreamlike state concocted in our mind and then when reality doesn't meet expectations we spiral down ward and see everything else negatively.

Go with an open mind, don't let minor things upset you, and try to make the best of everything.

I've seen a lot of cases here in SE Asia of restaurants and hotels posting fake bad reviews of their competitors' businesses. It's commonplace enough now that I generally disregard TripAdvisor ratings.

This :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shed_at_Dulwich

says everything you really need to know about TripAdvisor and their ilk.

I travel quite often. My 2 cents are: look at the 1 star reviews. If the one star reviews are less than 1:500 and the pictures are that of a well designed restaurant, it should be good with a 99% chance. Obviously, that’s kinda hard to find - but that should be the threshold.

Regarding hotels/apartments:

On Booking it should be 9.1+ And it should have an amazingly curated breakfast (check the pics too).

On Airbnb it should be either a “plus” or a “super host” with 5 star reviews only. Read the reviews tho. They often mention noises or lack of hot water. Those might be considered red flags.

And as a general rule of thumb, when you think you’re getting a great deal because it’s cheap, you’re not. Trust me, you’re not. Following the above advice, I never ever had a bad experience - but it definitely costed above average.

If you're the kind of person who likes unstructured travel instead of a checklist to get all those instagram pics, TripAdvisor really isn't the place you should be going. I recently used Yelp/TA in Jamaica and it put us at Rick's Cafe, one of the most highly rated and visited places in all of Jamaica. They had a gift shop and their $25 "jerk chicken" was literally baked chicken breast covered in barbecue sauce. Absolutely embarrassing and I felt shame for even giving them my money. I could have gone across the street to any jerk center and got something an order of magnitude better for 5 bucks.

this is why I agree with panoramix comment; ditch yelp and travel advisor and talk to the locals. It's like using Waze during rush hour, it steers everyone to the same route and in this case tourists trap. Not that the locals are always right either, as tastes differ, but it sets you off in the right direction.

... and yeah Rick's Cafe is overrated. You want to find the places before they become the "it" place to be put on the 'gram.

Highlights the larger problem that reviews have become untrustworthy and overwhelming for all but the most gullible and most discerning. The middle is stuck in roughly the same place they’d be without any reviews at all.

Simple rule for using TripAdvisor in any even vaguely touristy place: Ignore the top ~20 or so restaurants/hotels when sorted by rating. You can pretty much guarantee that at a minimum, they're soliciting reviews from a pool of satisfied customers, and a good chunk of them are just flat out buying reviews. This rule doesn't work as well for attractions, since the big ones tend to make their way to the top regardless, but the attraction list is pretty useful on its own if you dig down a ways. I've found lots of interesting small places that I'd have never otherwise found down in the sub-50th percentile rated attractions.

I do generally like the trick mentioned below of only looking at bad reviews, but I'm fairly relaxed about certain things. Bad neighborhood, overpriced food, poor valet service? Meh, don't care. Room smells of smoke? Not staying there. Most of my hotel research is based on filtering out unacceptable things, rather than optimizing the positive aspects.

For hotels, I have vaguely more trust in booking.com reviews, since in theory you have to stay at a hotel to leave a review there. (I do mention every time in these threads that the booking.com review scale is wack, and the median score was actually something like 8.1/10 when I scraped a lot of them, so take those 7.0 "Good" ratings with a grain of salt). In theory in the US Opentable ratings would work the same way for restaurants, but that's restricting the pool of restaurants to those that take reservations, and I don't use those ratings myself, so I'm not totally sure how accurate it is. Still probably beats Yelp, and definitely beats TripAdvisor.

I found this article to be very well written and brought up new facets of this problem that I hadn't previously considered. It was a great read.

The Guardian has fairly decent journalists working for them. I don't always agree with their politics, and the writing isn't as good as it was, say, 10 years ago but pieces like this show it is still of a high quality.

Based on previous posts I feel comfortable sharing a project with the HN community in this thread. It's a web app with for anyone to post travel related tips/thoughts. I'm open to honest feedback. www.worldpeer.com Thanks!

The main problem I have with tripadvisor ratings is that they don't actually give you a quality guide.

A 5 star tripadvisor rating doesn't mean the 2 star hotel under review is actually a 5 star property, merely that most people enjoyed themselves and got what they expected. Which also means that allegedly 4 and 5 star properties that are crap can get great reviews if their customers are ignorant but leave happy...

And that's before you get into the area of honesty, competing motives etc etc

I hope that many reviews help having a better idea of the place before going, but I don't trust them too much, for they can be not authentic, or driven by personal feelings. I rely more on qualified reviews like lonely planet guides, 8 out of 10 times they work well for me, and the remaining times are just average, nothing too bad.

Any good alternatives to TripAdvisor?

What about: - Conde Nast [www.condenast.com] - TripSavvy [www.tripsavvy.com]

I use wikitravel and buy books from publishers like lonely planet. If I rent a car, i always try to find some smart-phone app that can do narration based on location. A lot of these apps are done by a local person/company and provide information on what their favorite places are.

Just...go places.

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