TripAdvisor - Hotel Reviews & More

TripAdvisor is a great web site for hotel reviews. When I travel for business, I check TripAdvisor to find out about the hotel I will be staying at. TripAdvisor members post reviews of past hotel stays. And the reviews tend to be very honest. The process is similar to Amazon's product reviews. People who have stayed at the hotel will post their comments, both positive and negative. I will be attending a conference at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa in a few months. Take a look at the TripAdvisor reviews and try to get jealous!

Another nice feature TripAdvisor recently added is the ability to post your own photos of the hotel. Most hotels post glossy photos of the nicest rooms and facilities on their web sites. Quite often, the photos are much better than the actual rooms assigned. Guests posting actual photos of the rooms they stayed in offer a much more realistic view of what to expect at a hotel.

I gave an example of a hotel with really good reviews above. Here's an example of a hotel on the other end of the spectrum. WARNING: The reviewer photos may give you nightmares!

A few suggestions on using TripAdvisor:

• Throw out the high and the low score reviews and look at what the majority of hotel guests had to say. In most instances, the extremely good and extremely bad reviews tend to be rare occurances.
• Some people will only post bad reviews, because it is the only outlet they have after a bad experience at a hotel. An occasional bad review is expected for most hotels. A string of bad reviews is a gigantic warning sign.
• If all the reviews are good, the hotel is something to look forward to. If all the reviews are bad, avoid the hotel at all costs.
• The more recent reviews tend to be more accurate than older reviews. Hotel management tends to change once every few years. New managers are often brought in to improve a hotel with a bad reputation. Renovations can transform a dumpy hotel into a nice hotel.
• Hotels with less than 5 reviews may not provide a complete picture of what to expect.
• Look for tips and suggestions that reviewers provide. For instance, one side of the hotel may be quieter than the other side. Or one section may be renovated and offer nicer rooms than another section. Knowing what to ask for will make your hotel stay more pleasant.
• Look at the photos the guests posted. Those photos are usually much more realistic than the photos on the hotel's web site and brochure.

There are several other features TripAdvisor offers, which I will review in a future posting.

Happy Friday!