Blog Archives

How to Use Tripadvisor

Posted on by Chris

Related to my previous post on how to critically read consumer reviews –

Conde Nast asked  Tripadvisor executives how to best utilize their site.  Their advice:

–         Don’t automatically pick the #1 rated hotel.  Delve a bit into the reviews and pick one that suits your travel style and budget best.

–         Ask questions – privately message the reviewer or post a question in the forums.

–         Look at the pictures that reviewers post.  The pictures you view on a company’s website are going to be fabulous;  you’ll see how things actually are by looking at reviewers’ photos.

–         Read the Tripadvisor travel guides.

–         Connect your Tripadvisor account to your Facebook account to see reviews that your friends have written.

You can read what else the executive had to say here.

How do you use Tripadvisor?  Do you follow any of these suggestions?

 

Spot a Fake Online Review

Posted on by Chris

Travel sites driven by consumer reviews like Tripadvisor are common vacation planning tools, but users need to read these reviews with a critical eye.  Buzzfeed reports that while around 2% of all online reviews are fake, 4% of Yelp’s reviews are fabricated, and for the very popular Tripadvisor, the number of phony reviews increases to 6%.  Consumer advocate Clark Howard suggests not relying on just one site for advice and offers the following suggestions to help weed out scam reviews.

— Products or services that have a lot of reviews are far more trustworthy. There is safety in numbers in this case.
— Reviews that are completely one-sided — either glowingly good or glaringly bad — should be taken with a grain of salt. The best reviews examine all sides of the issue.
— Sometimes, consider the source: For example, Clark tends to dismiss hotel reviews from those who live in New York City or London, as they are so accustomed to sub-par housing, any hotel where the paint isn’t peeling off will get a great review. 

For further help, there’s a new tool available to help spot fake reviews called Review Skeptic.  Developed based on research from Cornell University, simply cut and paste an online review onto the site and it will tell you whether it is an authentic review or not.

Do you use online reviews when planning your vacation?

Tripadvisor.com logo

A Round Up of the Most Popular and Best Travel Sites

Posted on by Chris

When you’re planning a vacation what are your ‘go to’ travel sites?  Tripadvisor is probably one of them, along with Expedia, Travelocity, or maybe Priceline?  These are included in ebizMBA’s list of the Top 15 Most Popular Travel Websites.  Rounding out the top 10, besides the four mentioned, are Yahoo Travel, Orbitz, Kayak, Hotels.com, Travelzoo and Hotwire.  A site that is missing from the list, but is better than them all, is one called Hipmunk, according to Forbes writer Bruce Upbin.  He believes it is the best travel site on the web because it does the best job in presenting hotel and flight information and provides the best user experience.  You can read his review of the site here.  Budget Travel also recommends Hipmunk.  The travel site is on its list of 8 Cool New Tools for Finding the Perfect Hotel.  Also on the list, along with a description and tips on how to utilize each site, are:

BackBid (backbid.com); DealBase (dealbase.com); HotelSweep (hotelsweep.com); Momondo (momondo.com); Room 77 (room77.com); Room Key (roomkey.com); YourRoomKey (yourroomkey.com).

And finally, consumer advocate (and former travel agency owner) Clark Howard has his list of favorite travel websites.  Many of the ones listed above are included here, but there’s also some additional ones such as SideStep.com, Mobissimo, and FareCompare.

What travel site do you recommend?

Hipmunk’s mascot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)