Tripadvisor and how does it work?

I do my research using Tripadvisor and travel books, then I usually just go to the hotel's website and book directly online through that, unless there is an exceptional deal on one of the travel sites linked to Tripadvisor, such as Expedia or Travelocity.

Note that the special deals usually require immediate charge to your credit card with a no cancellation policy, so if you need to cancel, it may be a hassle to get reimbursed through cancellation insurance.

I find that the hotel's website rates are as good if not sometimes better than the travel sites. The travel sites linked to Tripadvisor are just online travel agencies.

If the hotel doesn't have a website with online booking (very rare these days, but a few don't), try emailing or phoning the hotel directly. If you belong to CAA (or AAA in the U.S.), you sometimes can get a good price booking the hotel through them.

Others have recommended www.venere.com as a reliable hotel booking service, I personally have not used it.

I agree with the above post. I use it in the same way. I recently booked a hotel in Paris directly via their web site. The cost was a little cheaper than via the search engines.

TripAdvisor hands off your query to several online travel sites. You'll see them listed in the popup that appears initially.

Hotels can and do outsource their online booking service. I've found that some hotels appear to maintain multiple sites, at different URL's, that hand off booking queries to other, varied, online reservation services. If you phone to book, there's a good chance the hotel employee is entering your reservation in the same outsourced system.

Also, there is really nothing preventing a reservation service from registering a domain name that incorporates a hotel's name, availability and lawyers aside, thereby funneling reservations to its own system.

This opens up the possibility of crooks setting up phony hotel booking sites and collecting bookings, and financial data, from their victims.

I always use Trip Advisor to book my hotel and have found the rates better than going direct. You generally get anywhere between 2 and 6 pop ups so you can compare the prices. I also use one of the services that do not charge you up front but they do take your credit card details to confirm the booking. I have never had a problem and have had to cancel bookings again without any hassles. I also use venere and find it good too. I would think that all the hotels have web sites so it's just a matter of googling the name to find it. You could compare the two and see which price is better.

TA is best used for reading and submitting reviews and asking/answering questions. The button to compare prices is just icing on the cake, and I use it to just get a ballpark of what I might expect to pay.

Yes, booking directly will usually get you a better price than what you see in the comparison online booking facilities provided by TA. However, there are a couple of online sites that TA doesn't use that can sometimes have fantastic prices. www.yeego.com and www.octopustravel.com have both worked wonderfully well for me.

Lastly when booking through any website including the hotel's direct booking facility, always verify that all VAT and service fees are included and also verify if the rate includes breakfast.

I really like TA and use it to plan all my vacations. I think the site is best for it reviews for hotels, people give their honest opinion and even add photos so you get a truer representation from other than the hotel website.

Most often when I'm on TA I'll type in a city and start with the hotel from the one with the highest rating, I then have a seperate window open and google the hotel to find their site to check further info and prices. I have never booked anything with TA and don't think you need to.

The other feature which is great is the forums for each city, set up much like this site you can ask questions of other travelers and even search to see if other people have asked the same question you have.

For one hotel, there was only one review available, and yet the Tripadvisor overall hotel rating was different from that one person's review.

For another hotel, two contributors both rated it 1 out of 5, but the overall rating was 3 out of 5.

Why is that? It makes me trust Tripadvisor less.