TripAdvisor
When it comes to planning a trip, be it in
this country or abroad, TripAdvisor www.tripadvisor.co.uk
can come in very handy to help you decide where to stay and what to visit and
where to eat. You are drawing on the
experience of thousands of fellow travellers, who give their unbiased opinions
on this valuable website. You can also
see photos taken by people who have visited the places listed. It is free to use and one of the biggest
travel websites in existence. 280
million people visit the site every month.
Incredibly, Trip Advisor came into being 15
years ago. The logo of the owl is now well
recognized worldwide. Had you ever
noticed that one of it’s eyes is red and the other green? This symbolizes how travellers use the
site. Red means don’t go and green means
go. Travellers give places a rating,
which is measured in circles or bubbles and not stars. The highest rating is 5 bubbles.
London is one of the most reviewed cities,
but you will be able to find reviews on hotels, restaurants or tourist
attractions in any country or city in the world.
I find that you do get some bad
reviews. Some of them are really quite
funny. People who are annoyed with small
things will sometimes lash out at the owners of hotels or restaurants by
posting a bad review. You can usually
sift through all the latest reviews and get a good overall feeling for a place. Don’t let one bad review put you off.
There is a wonderful country pub just
outside Bath which we visit from time to time.
The landlord there seems to polarise opinions on TripAdvisor. Some find him charming, and others describe
him as being rather too jovial.
I enjoy writing reviews for Trip Advisor as
well as drawing on it for guidance in planning trips. Once you start reviewing, it can be quite
addictive, and a nice way to keep a record of the places that you have visited.
As a reviewer, you will get emails from
TripAdvisor telling you how many people have read your reviews. Travellers can give other reviewers a
“Helpful badge” if they find their
reviews useful. A reviewer in Hong Kong
has written over 3200 reviews
You can work your way through the ranks of
reviewers and become a senior reviewer after so many reviews. You can
hide your full name, and appear under your first name, and where you live. If you have had a good experience somewhere,
it is a lovely thing to do, and restaurants and hotels really do appreciate
your comments, and often thank you for them.
If you have made any negative comments or put forward suggestions, the
management can also comment about that.
TripAdvisor has suffered from it’s fair share
of controversy. There were instances of
guests being bribed to leave good reviews of a hotel in Cornwall, and of
reviewers posting an alarming amount of reviews of places in too short a short
time to be possible. One hotel in
Blackpool fined guests £100 for leaving bad reviews, and rival hotels busied
themselves writing negative reviews about each other! There have even been spoof listings of non
existent places, which climbed up the rankings and took some time to be
spotted. The site has now started to
check reviews, and only posts them once they are satisfied that it is
genuine. Some of the reviews are not
from real travellers, so I do urge you to read through at least 10 reviews
before making a decision.
