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You book a 4 star hotel that you think is going to make a great impression on your spouse for your anniversary. You followed our advice in our Guide to Getting a Cheap Hotel Room and you book through one of the major travel sites and its a national chain. You get a great price that fits your cheap personality but this hotel is all luxury....or so you thought.
The mistake you made is that you blindly relied on the the ratings of the major travel sites. Over 80% of people believe in user generated reviews. Naturally distrustful of hotels that toot their own horns and trabel agencies that steer you to certain properties, travelers are willing to rely on this crowd sourced information.
You assumed that because it was given a score of 4.5 that you were going to be just fine. Unfortunately, what you didn't realize is that 25% of the reviews (all 5s) were by the hotel manager himself! Even TripAdvisor (owned by Expedia), which has more reviews than anyone other site, has had big issues with fraudelent reviews. There are some people that think that a high number of TripAdvisor reviews is done by people either connected with the hotel or competing with the hotel. This is especially true of non-chain hotels. That's right, those 1 star reviews for a property that seems to get lots of 4s and 5s can be fradulent too. What better way to knock of your competition than to give them alot of negative reviews.
Now some sites such as Priceline.com and Expedia actually require the user to book a hotel room before they are able to review it. Since TripAdvisor, Orbitz, and others don't, they are open to more manipulation. Offsetting that for TripAdvisor is the sheer number of reviews.
Reading the tea leaves of reviews takes some practice. First, you need to be wary of any hotel review that dings one hotel in favor of another one. Visiting TripAdvisor, I read a detailed review that trashed a Sheraton and repeatedly suggested that the Westin was far superior. It gave the hotel a 1 star and complained about things that most people wouldn't even think about.
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