Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. Mark Twain
I am one of those evil people who reads the reviews but never leaves my own. I'm scared to not be anonymous, particularly when reviewing small tours and such.
Post by sunshinedaydreams on Aug 28, 2014 19:16:40 GMT -5
I almost always leave reviews for hotels, unless it's something like The Venetian in Vegas where there are 23981 new reviews posted each day and mine really doesn't matter. I'm a bit lazier with reviews for attractions and restaurants. I typically only review those if something went very, very well or very badly.
I'm a dork about it and get super excited every time I get a new "helpful" vote. :-)
Post by RoxMonster on Aug 28, 2014 19:46:17 GMT -5
I usually always leave TA reviews for places on vacation. I enjoy it and I love reading reviews for places we plan to visit on vacation. It's kind of an obsession lol.
I will leave a review if I have something notable to say about it. If I don't have a strong opinion either way about a hotel or experience then I probably won't review it. I'm less keen to review these days because sometimes I find that the quality of an establishment is changing as I review it. For example, I stayed at a resort where I had a pretty good experience but it was right when the management was changing and I have a feeling that the quality was declining after I reviewed it. I didn't really experience this decline but I do think that it made my review a bit inaccurate for someone reading afterwards.
Basically, I do reviews but I'm picky about what I decide to review. I don't want to leave a review just for the sake of doing so. There needs to be a reason.
I used to be religious about this but now I just don't have the time. I should try harder as I always use Trip Advisor to book.
Yes, I was on a role and then, just quit doing it.
Re: Hotel Reviews, I tend to like to post photos of the rooms and/or view from the room with the room number. I hate when we are going to stay at a new hotel and can't get a good idea from the reviews of the room setup, views, etc.
I used to be extremely diligent about taking room photos as soon as we arrived. But I've slacked off a bit over the past few years.
I'm much more likely to review restaurants close to home, because I know what to expect. Food and service styles are so different in different parts of the world that I feel like I can't often judge fairly. Just because I think a restaurant is pretty good or bad, doesn't mean it's that good or bad compared to the norm for that city. (For example, restaurant reviews in Oslo always talk about how expensive they are, even when it's one of the cheapest places in the city. I feel like that's misleading, because then people can't tell which places really are expensive.)
Similarly I never count points off a hotel room for being small unless I know that the norm for that area and price point is much bigger.
I will leave a review if I have something notable to say about it. If I don't have a strong opinion either way about a hotel or experience then I probably won't review it. I'm less keen to review these days because sometimes I find that the quality of an establishment is changing as I review it. For example, I stayed at a resort where I had a pretty good experience but it was right when the management was changing and I have a feeling that the quality was declining after I reviewed it. I didn't really experience this decline but I do think that it made my review a bit inaccurate for someone reading afterwards.
Basically, I do reviews but I'm picky about what I decide to review. I don't want to leave a review just for the sake of doing so. There needs to be a reason.
As a review-reader, I appreciate the reviews that are in the middle - when nothing was great, but nothing was terrible. I think people are more likely to post experiences if something went wrong (and sometimes if everything was just perfect). I like knowing things are just okay sometimes.
I can say that personally I don't go on there to post negative reviews. I give relatively few bad reviews and in the cases where I have, I stuck to describing specific facts of the experience. (I do more reviewing on Yelp for example but it's the same principle). I tend to just write reviews about experiences that are memorable or noteworthy to me, otherwise, I don't really feel compelled to describe them publicly. That's just my take on it though. I think it's perfectly fine for other people to do it differently.
I do a lot more reviewing of restaurants than hotels, to be honest.
For the first time ever, I finally posted a review, but on hotels.com. We stayed at a lovely B&B for two nights in Hawaii that perfectly fit our needs and I felt compelled to post. I also posted a review of our hotel for one night in Athens because it had some nice things not mentioned in the posts I had read online.
I usually don't have anything unique to say about a hotel. DH and I went on a tour in Hawaii that everyone raved about on trip advisor and it was fun, but very misrepresented (no mention anywhere that you show up at 9 but don't leave till 10 and that you might not get home until 10 pm and that most tours have two guides so people can turn back but we only had one so turning back was not a viable option). I didn't want to post a negative review since our single guide situation and late hours might have been a one-off.
Post by WinterWine on Sept 1, 2014 16:40:11 GMT -5
I always read them but have never reviewed anything. I just decided this trip it's time to stop being such a lazy taker and give back a bit. I'll write reviews when I get gone this week.
Post by caddywompus on Sept 2, 2014 10:45:21 GMT -5
I always review the hotels we stay at. I try to be specific, and list extra positive or negative things, and not just the same generic stuff thet everyone else writes. I always look at the TA reviews when I book a new place. I keep saying I'm going to do some restaurant reviews, but then I keep putting it off...