Do you write TripAdvisor reviews?

I still use TA for research but I seldom leave a review. I, like you, will review smaller companies that really stand out for me and sometimes I’ll review a hotel. The thing I am most likely to review is a company I used for a private tour somewhere. And when I review, I take a lot of time to make it specific and detailed as those are the ones that are helpful to me in my planning.

Generally I do not write on TA. However, a couple of times the place I stayed was outstanding and the other was absolutely horrible and I did. I write and rate a lot on booking.com. I still use Yelp and write as well. I typically look at reviews as to the actual complaints. If a hotel is describe as decorated poorly or the staff wasn't friendly at check-in, I pretty much ignore them. I focus on things like; did the AC work? Was it noisy? Was it clean?

In regards to restaurants I only focus on the food, flavor and freshness. Don't care about the decor, ambiance or actually service, unless it is atrocious.

I think many travelers expect perfection in everything they experience in Europe. Europe isn't any different than the US. Good places and not so good places.

I use TripAdvisor a lot - and find it very useful in finding restaurants and hotels. I also use this forum and AAA. I do try to 'give back' and leave a TripAdvisor review when we return and I do review hotels, tours, restaurants.

I do, but not all the time. I did a few for local places during the pandemic, but otherwise I mostly do it for when we are traveling, and that is if I remember;)

I used to write hotel reviews soon after we came home from a trip. In Santa Barbara I would get notifications of my rank with other review writers in the city. I didn’t realize how competitive I was until Peter Noone showed up ranked one place above me. 😉

I still write reviews but since we usually exchange homes we may only have a couple of hotels where we stay on each European trip. I also write reviews for domestic hotels.

It’s been several years since TA notified me about any ranking. Maybe they’ve discontinued that feature?

Like several others who have posted, I use TA almost exclusively to find special activities, things to do and private guides. I like to leave reviews when these are wonderful and of what I consider to be higher quality than you might normally expect to find.

I always research the hotels/B&Bs/restaurants/tours that we take. I use TripAdvisor and other sites. Also, I have posted hundreds of reviews on TA and other sites.

TA is helpful, but I like to dig into the reviews to get an accurate view. I always look at the poor reviews to see if there is some validity to them. For example, I wanted a hotel in Miami that provided free parking while on a cruise with a one night stay. There were about 20% poor reviews (which is not generally good) however, I discovered that the hotel was being renovated and that all the poor reviews were from prior to the renovation. The hotel turned out to be great, we had a fantastic rate, brand new room and the Cuban restaurant at the top floor was super.

Yes, I do, but I haven't been anywhere lately to say much. I also use the location specific forums as I often travel outside Europe or North America and appreciate the locals responses....particularly now.

I will leave a review if 1: a place ( hotel or other) is great and doesn’t have a lot of reviews yet or 2: a place has concerning issues ( like not clean or no AC in a hot climate)
I will use TA on trips especially in the US for ideas , hotels etc so try and contribute.

I occasionally leave a review.
I use the TA forum in planning for a trip because there is usually a local that will answer specific questions.
I read the negative reviews to see if there is something that would bother me. I rely heavily on the traveler photographs. I usually post my photos when I return from a trip. I almost always take photos of my room, the bathroom and food in restaurants. Friends and family enjoy the food photos, but the room photos are a way for me to catalog memories and give back to the next person looking on TA.

Yes, I both read and write reviews. For many small businesses, this helps their Google ranking as well as tell future customers what to expect. When someone goes above and beyond, why not write them a compliment?
TA itself is very useful and there are many helpful people on the forums that have helped me plan trips. I return the favor.

I use TA frequently to research hotels and restaurants. I usually throw out the highest and lowest reviews unless there are many. When I read a bad review I check the reviewer. Sometimes they only have reviewed once, or all their reviews are negative. I leave reviews after traveling, so not for awhile!

I write TA reviews on all my trips, but especially for attractions, sights, and restaurants in small out of the way places; places that don’t get a lot of reviews. I try to avoid writing reviews for really popular sights since there are already thousands of reviews. I use TA for researching hotels and places to visit and pay attention to the photographs. I read the recent bad reviews while pondering whether the writer had a legitimate complaint or was being overly picky. I seldom pay attention to the glowing reviews.

I use TA a lot when planning a trip, so I return the favor by writing reviews of hotels, restaurants, etc. Unfortunately, there haven't been many reviews since before COVID due to the lack of travelers. I find both TA and Yelp reviews to be helpful. In fact, the worst place that I was going to stay at was a spur of the moment stop and I hadn't checked the reviews. One look around the lobby and we turned around and left.

One thing to be wary of are first time contributors who give a hotel a five star rating because "Darlene" at the front desk was so friendly, or "Diane the housekeeper" did such a good job. Those ratings are obviously fake and just intended to boost the hotel's overall ratings.

I try to do it every time we take a trip or go to a new restaurant/activity in our home areas. However, like others, I don’t bother reviewing popular attractions. I do it because the reviews posted by others have helped me in planning, so I try to give back with specific reviews. I’ll actually lean more on recent TA reviews as opposed to guidebook reviews because things can change dramatically between the time a guidebook is published and I am traveling. A hotel can be sold or a chef can leave and the whole thing changes.

I did a long review of a river cruise because all the reviews on Cruise Critic just talked about food and room sizes and I wanted info on the value of paying for add-on tours. I’ve found guides for WWII sites, info how how to visit WWII sites on my own, specifics on how to play The Old Course at St. Andrews and gotten tips for location experts who are willing to spend time answering questions. I use the archives on the RS site, but it seems harder to find exactly what I’m looking for. Having the bookmark feature has helped significantly for trips I’m hoping to take in the future.

Yes, I do and have since TA was developed before it became a booking site. As with any review, read many And throw out the best and worst.

Yes, I leave TA reviews for hotels and sometimes for restaurants. I also leave reviews when I get a prompt from Google reviews. I will admit, I haven't been writing too many since Feb. 2020 but hopefully that will start to change.

However, I don't rely on the reviews on TA as much as I used to, especially for hotels. I now also check out the ratings and reviews on Booking.com, as well as Google, in addition to TA. Booking.com requires that the reviewer has actually stayed at the hotel, so that makes me feel a little more confident that the review is legitimate.

here I go!
In 2014 I was Trip Advisors Top reviewer for 2014 in the UK
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/Meet-TripAdvisors-most-prolific-reviewer/
the article does not give my full reasons for all the reviews i did and Trip Advisor themselves asked to monitor anything I said to the press, I told them where to go.
I had been annoyed for a few years at the quality of many the reviews i read and of the number of obvious fake reviews on the website. TA had imported loads of reviews from other companies they acquired or partnered with but not bothering to check authenticity or even if the places still existed. There were reviews of places in my own city that I know had been closed for years or had been renamed ,many places had double or triple listings due to some slight typo in the name , they whole review section became a total mess.
i tried to prove my point by reviewing anything that could be reviewed on the website that i had actually experienced ,so review them i did, every review i did was totally genuine and i had an "experience" with the actual listing even if that listing might be a statue in the middle of a street or a pub or hotel were i popped in to use the facilities .
TA also introduce social media Influencers into the mix around this time and also allowed "tweet" style reviews that made things even worse and i lost what little faith i had in TA reviews totally.
I have not used TA reviews for many years and after i became a Top Reviewer I removed every single review i ever did for TA ,over 1000 since I first joined, i also removed all photos ,about 300 and and finally gave up my Destination Expert status
for my home city of Edinburgh disconnected myself as much as I could from TA. I do still post of the Czech republic forum and occasionally on the Scottish forums but generally i have little to do with then these days.

Trip Advisor has been very helpful when I research our trips. I especially use it in choosing hotels and restaurants as well as attractions to visit. I like to give back by writing reviews to help others also. Over the years I have written 200 reviews and 175,000 readers have seen them which is mindboggling to me. Whenever I get a helpful vote from someone, I know it is worth it as others make their travel choices. It is a fun hobby for me. My husband is a 2 million miler traveler and we miss our international travel.

I try to review every chance I have. I especially enjoy being the first to review a new place. Usually restaurants of course, but also a couple of attractions that were missed by others.

I was in the early cohort of TA in England and Europe and I initially reviewed many many places,

The feel of TA in those days was much like here, ordinary people helping other people. I accepted other reviews pretty much on face value, and really relied on them in places I hadn't visited or stayed at previously. I was always honest and truthful and so it appeared to me were the others.

I then noticed a number of attack reviews which seemed obviously from competitors. They were unpleasant but relatively easy to spot and I continued to write reviews myself. Over the years it has been hundreds.

Then everything changed and instead of being folks helping folks I decided it was much more of a money machine - a money machine for the owners of good places (and I was fine with that), but even more a money machine for TA, to the extent that what standards there had been vanished. Despite many reports and investigations showing the huge number of fakes, it ploughs on regardless.

When I reported fakes or blatant errors those posts stayed up anyway.

Now I have very little faith in TA at all and it has been several years since I have written any reviews at all on TA, and I may look something up on them a couple of times a year if that.

Call me completely disillusioned.

I am a Destination Expert for Vienna on TA, but I do not write reviews any longer (I remain active on the travel forum, however, which I feel has much better local knowledge than here). For restaurants, I cannot see anything in the TA top 30 for Vienna that I would even recommend to a visitor. It is all really just a game now with restaurants inflating their reviews. For hotels, I read the reviews on booking.com as these reviews are written by people who have actually stayed in and paid for accommodation.

I write reviews on TA if a hotel is truly outstanding or if a hotel is really bad. The really bad ones are rare. I rely on TA reviews of hotels but tend to dismiss bad reviews if they are for nitpicky reasons. I also look at how many times a reviewer has posted.

sends his god over to do his business on the lawn

huh?

I used to post reviews about hotels fairly regularly until 2019 and then I just stopped. No reason, just stopped. I still read the reviews and as a result I should continue to participate because honest reviews-good or bad, is what we count on to be able to make the site function properly for the users. Along with many other posters above, I read plenty of reviews to determine if the positive and negative points raised are important to me.

I'm not a believer in only writing a review if I'm only going to say something negative, or only if I have something positive to say. One poster mentioned only leaving a review for smaller places where they had a positive experience. I appreciate more of a balanced posting history. I'm after more clinical and concise reviews of what you liked and what you didn't like and why those things were important to you. It doesn't matter if its a worldwide chain or a Mom and Pop run establishment; I'm going to be honest and give reasons of why my opinions were important to me.

Yes! I mostly write hotel reviews. Since 2005. Yikes! Old.

Have never posted a Trip Advisor review, and haven’t had much opportunity to read or research others’ postings.

The last time I posted a TA review was in 2012. When I posted, I only posted when I had a positive review to write and generally for smaller places where I felt my review might make a difference. If I had a mediocre experience, I didn’t bother to write a review. I still use TA for research, although nowhere near as much as I did before it became so commercial and littered with fake reviews.

in his guidebooks Rick offers his opinion on the opinions on TA, and he doesn't totally dismiss them but points out that people who write for guidebooks are more "professional," travel/review for a living and have seen more stuff and have a better basis for comparison.

Also be aware that these days if you post something negative on any internet forum, you can be hounded legally and illegally and sometimes even have suits brought against you. It's nuts.

So, posts on Rick’s Website forum, it being an Internet forum, are mostly opinions or reports from voluntary posters, largely not travel professionals. The Webmaster here works to maintain a respectful decorum, to provide an opportunity to ask travel questions and submit responses, and bans commercial advertisements and obvious junk. But it’s an Internet forum, with all that implies. I’ve certainly gotten useful information from Rick Steves’ Graffiti Wall/Travel Forum contributors, and look forward to being able to continue to do so. I hope my two cents worth on posts have been useful to others, as well.

There are still some travel agents available, who will provide information and earn their assistance for a fee, so take any forum for what it’s worth. This one sounds like it could be worth a bit more than some.

Thanks everyone for your answers thus far. I'm relatively new to European travel (started in 2014), but I've done a lot of it since then. TA and RS guides were my chief sources for the first few trips. They are still among the resources I consult, but they have fallen down the list. Like others, Booking is now high on the list for accommodations (though I still consult TA). The thing I miss the most about the old TA was the listings/reviews for guides in cities; now it's almost impossible to find a list of guides for any given city since TA's goal is to sell tours, not connect people with guides. I have found the TA forums to be pretty great and, as Emily noted, to have more locals than this forum, but I spend a lot more time here than on the TA forums.

Ready for one of my secret TA pleasures? Leaving reviews for places for which I'm one of the few English-language reviewers. I love it when I leave a review for a place in Germany and 80-90% of the reviews are in German!

Dave, I wonder if Germans find TA more useful right now than do English speakers? Is it simply a uniform, worldwide entity, or does it have better or less ideal applications in some places versus other locales?

Before internet bots, one could take some faith in a personal review. Well.... Now, that isn't the case.

@Unclegus

@Nigel

Back in the swinging seventies, did you ever take a package tour with Scuttle Tours, led by Fred Scuttle himself, and later write up a review?

Regards
Ron

Dave, I wonder if Germans find TA more useful right now than do
English speakers? Is it simply a uniform, worldwide entity, or does it
have better or less ideal applications in some places versus other
locales?

I would have to defer to a German to answer the first question, but I think TA's business model is uniform worldwide. I will give them credit where credit is due, though... the TA forums remain a generous public service from TA (as does this forum... which is much to Rick Steves' credit).

Back in the swinging seventies, did you ever take a package tour with Scuttle Tours, led by Fred Scuttle himself, and later write up a review?

nah - old Benny had too many young ladies chasing him

i was tempted by the Scuttle tours but far to slow to run away from the ladies

I occasionally write a TA review when I have had a good experience with a small hotel or small company that doesn't have a large marketing budget.

I might be in the minority, but I use TA all the time when travelling, particularly looking for restaurants. As such, I feel almost a duty to review a place I've eaten. I've found some gems using TA (a small restaurant in Athens which didn't look overly interesting, but where the food, although very simple, was stunningly good - or a seafood restaurant in Trani (Puglia) which ranks among the best meals I've ever eaten.

Sorry I couldn't read the article Uncle Gus posted behind the Telegraph's paywall. I sometimes read TA reviews, but less and less these days, so many of them seem either fakes, generalizations, or nitpicky complaints. The most useful reviews, I think, are the recent negative ones -- if they show a pattern from multiple people about issues I'd care about, that's a red flag. But one person's one-sided account of a bad experience wouldn't make much difference.

I haven't been to the TA Forum yet, maybe I'll visit and lurk there for awhile. If it has better local knowledge that would be helpful. But I hesitate to spend more valuable(?) time on travel forums, wonderful as this one is and all you good people are! ;-)

I look at TA and everything else I can find while making an itinerary and deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. This itinerary goes through several iterations prior to departure. For me this type of research is not only fun but makes the trip go much smoother. As an example it was a somewhat complicated walk from the Paris Metro to our VRBO. I got on Google Maps and virtually walked it many times, so when we arrived with jet lag and brain fog I was prepared. These seemingly minor details can make a big difference overall.

Even though I repeatedly studied the ticketing procedures for the Metro at CDG I still couldn't figure it out. All of the attendants were helping other people and I felt bad for the line behind me. Fortunately, a French lady stepped up and helped us out. It's funny how simple things are difficult when jet-lagged.

Only if its a site or establishment that has not been reviewed to death on other sites. Only if I've actually been there and when. Always more than just a quip, .... I'll write a detailed paragraph or two. And always with the caveat that it is only my opinion and what circumstances lead to that opinion. That way the reader will know I'm not just a review bot. :)

Also found that some European Nationalities are very critical, of each other's, facilities and for the tiniest of perceived slights or cultural differences. So one has to read between the lines on many TA reviews. :)

I use TA for the forums there for non- Europe travel. I do write reviews when I either have really great or really bad experiences. I don't use the site otherwise

Yes I do. I used TripAdvisor almost solely for a trip to Barcelona and Geneva a few years ago; before I knew about this site and Fodors. It was very helpful.

I leave very honest reviews on it. Not so much my opinion but details of a tour, a street, an attraction, a hotel, a pub, etc. so the reader can make up his own mind. This Board and Fodors seem to be very very positive. I love optimistic people but travel time is so precious that I really appreciate the full picture when visiting a city or attraction. For example, there is a Ghost Tour in Edinburgh that we didn't love so I spelled out the pros and cons. Same with staying in Mayfair in London, Geneva in June and others.

My travels to Europe of late are my VERY BEST times and memories. But if I can avoid a tacky touristy restaurant, or find a better hotel on a buzzy street, I'm all for it.

I don't write many reviews on TA but I use the forums a LOT. In my experience you have to read a forum for a while to get the feel of who the players are and whether you would value their opinions. On some forums the knowledgeable members can help sort out which lodging or restaurant choices might work for a particular situation although on others the same person will recommend the same flipping hotel/restaurant/guide for every situation.

I think my last review was for a terrific falafel place in Aix-en-Provence in 2019. The staff/owners were wonderful and remembered me when I went back the next day and the food was delicious. In general, though, I don't review restaurants as I'm vegan and my tastes are not what most are looking for.

The US destination I visit most I don't review nor do I read the reviews. It's a national park and the reviews are mostly from people complaining about lack of amenities because they didn't read the information presented on the concessioner's website. Nope, no AC and no TV. Wifi terrible. Cell service non-existent. The stuff that's important is outside, lol. I love the clever posters this woman has done on her Instagram SubPar Parks. So funny.

https://www.instagram.com/subparparks/

I do check out the reviews for tour hotels, both Rick's and for Road Scholar which is my other tour company of choice.

For Europe I use Rick Steve’s’ guidebooks and then check TA for negative reviews. A couple times I wrote positive reviews to help out the mom-and-pop B&Bs. When I do that, I am honest and let the reader know how to find the place on foot or whether to take a taxi and add other information that is relevant.
Only once have I written a negative review and it was well deserved because the place was filthy. When deciding to choose a hotel or tour, I look for the TA owl eyes on the website that I book with. Whenever I’ve done this, I was completely satisfied with my choice.

I used to check out and write reviews on TripAdvisor, but I now prefer to do so on Google Maps which is more user-friendly and seems to be used more by locals (I find it particularly good for restaurants). There is a lot of bogus ratings but easy to spot.

Yes, and I read them as well. Tripadvisor isn't perfect but it is a good source of information, and in my opinion especially a good way to avoid tourist traps.

Except the airline reviews, that for some reason are totally useless.

I appreciate all the responses. When I really, really like something, I sometimes wonder if my glowing review sounds like a "plant." I try to add something that makes the review sound like a real person wrote it -- maybe a detail about the trip or a photo. ​

I noticed some comments mention ignoring excellent reviews. I actually read those, too. I like to know that people enjoyed their experience. Of course, I give the reviews more credence if the writer has a good number of reviews, participates in the forums, or includes things that make the review seem real.

I will add that a few years ago, TA changed its algorithm for ranking establishments. It significantly increased the weight given to quantity of reviews. That has been something that has made finding gems a little harder and has pushed the high-frequented tourist restaurants up the list in any given destination.

Several years ago I found a gem of a restaurant in Berlin on TA. It was a 7-table Sardinian restaurant far away from the city center. It didn't have a ton of reviews, but all were excellent (and largely written by locals). That restaurant would be buried deep in the restaurant rankings now because of its small number of reviews.

I don’t follow TA as much as I used to since I find navigating the website more difficult if I want to get away from sponsored content. However, once upon a time TA used to give window stickers to hotels and restaurants that had been reviewed. I wonder if they still do that? We wandered by a family restaurant in Lisbon that had a window sticker and turned out to be delicious.

I read them carefully and look for trends or anything between the lines that give me some insight. This has worked well for us.

Yes, TA still gives out stickers...

https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/w673

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hanifahrahman/uk-tripadvisor-reviews?d_id=2331095&ref=bffbbuzzfeeduk&utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bffbbuzzfeeduk&fbclid=IwAR1rCAMugjBC6V_g5k4jhllkEqzUItTti7R7GQdYG27fauaJjO-GzzfT_G8
this came up on my FaceBook feed today, thought i would share.

@ Unclegus

At least the Long Room at Lords and the Ashes Urn still attracts the discerning tourist.

Regards The Don