Copenhagen’s elegant Hotel D’Angleterre opens May 1 after a 2 year re-do (Chris McGinnis)
Nearly every traveler I know (including me) checks out hotels on TripAdvisor before making a booking. I’m sure you do, too. Right? The infographic below provides an interesting look at how travelers use the review sites and what makes them trustworthy. It also provides some tips on spotting “fake” reviews.
How do YOU feel about hotel review sites? Do you use them? Trust them? Other than TripAdvisor, which sites do you find most helpful?
Please leave your comments below!
*****
in my opinion 10-20% have impossible standards/unrealistic expectations (5 star service and accommodations at a 3.5 star price), or just got a bad room, or found one minor thing to complain about that never got resolved. perhaps they had a terrible vacation and want to blame the entire thing on the hotel where they’re staying. some people just love to bitch in general, so it pays to read between the lines. I think vacation travelers are much worse than business travelers in this regard.
example: I’d say 80% of hotels I’ve ever stayed in, 3 stars or above, have a very bad clothes iron or ironing board, or the A/C is impossible to set correctly so you’re not too hot/cold at some point in the middle of the night. another 60-70% have no easily reachable outlet next to the bed, when I am trying to do work on my laptop before bed or charge my phone overnight. I wouldn’t fail a hotel on this alone, knowing no hotel is perfect. but I’d give them poor feedback directly to corporate or the manager of the hotel.
Mind where the reviewer is from .. not all coutjries have same standrads as US .. and if you don’t find ANY bad reviews there should be suspicoion some people HAVE to complain .. much is the complaints are probably about stuff you don’t care about
Identify travel agents . We have encountered travel agents at several resorts who readily admit their trips are subsidized as fact finding missions on very discounted rates and glowing reviews are EXPECTED by the resorts and their parent companies.
There are too many hotels and resorts given five/six stars by too many that do not know what excellent service should be. A cheese platter and free bottle of booze is not indicative of five star service.
I know for me it is sometimes hard to know what to believe. A hotel may a lot of good reviews and then you have people who say it was the worst experience of their lives.
I definitely use Tripadvisor. One soon learns to spot the fake (or crazy) reviews, both good or bad. Many (most?) of the comments are from leisure travelers. After using Tripadvisor for so long, about two years ago I started commenting on every hotel where I stayed. I’m up to about 70 hotel reviews so far and I make it a point to gear my reviews towards the business traveler – and I wish more business travelers did the same.
Why thank you, Lovey! How’s Thurston III? 😉
I unfailingly consult Trip Advisor when booking an unfamiliar property. You have to discount the obviously crazy reviews, but I will read the most recent 10-20, and correspondingly the latest 10-15 negative reviews. It usually provides a realistic picture. I don’t, however, leave many reviews myself unless the property was spectacularly good or bad.
I look to the reviews for trends. Anything overly glowing or that really trashes a place I don’t put a lot of stock in. But if 3-4 reviews say things like, “kind of a scary neighborhood” or something like that I take them to heart. I also make sure to check the most recent reviews as some from many years ago may have been before a renovation or even when it was another type of property.