While reading this article I couldn't help thinking about my first TripAdvisor experience. After booking a 25 euro room at the Rikka Inn on Khao San Road, I decided to have a look at reviews of the hotel on internet (arguably, it is better done before the booking...) and that search naturally took me to TripAdvisor.com.
As I normally do, I started with the bad reviews and I started to get worried about my future couple of nights in this hotel. That said, I did go and realized the reviews I read were totally unfounded. True, the rooms were not the best I ever seen and the pictures on the website were probably a little dated (from before the opening I imagine) but then again, I am not entirely sure what these people were expecting for 25 euro. The truth is the rooms were not the best decorated rooms in Bangkok but they were clean, the staff could have used a couple of english lessons but they tried really hard and were rather pleasant and while I was lying by the rooftop swimming pool I felt the overall experience was rather good value for money!
My real problem with TripAdvisor and other peer review website, is that people are more likely to make the effort to leave a (bad) review if they've had a bad experience than if they've had a great one or even an OK time. There is also the fact that someone who is traveling once a year and someone staying in hotels a couple of times a month have greatly different standards and expectation. The same is true depending on where you are from, your social background and for all the factors that make us different from one another.
The article mentions TripAdvisor having over 40 million reviews on its site, and maybe it is my own lack of faith in people talking, but I cannot imagine many of them being truly objective reviews, and yet, TripAdvisor, with its 5 millions daily visitors, seems to have become a truly important factor on the way hoteliers are running their business.
