I'm a pretty heavy user of TripAdvisor on vacations. I use it with caution, because of the Rate Your Professor effect. People who bother to plug in their evaluations of hotels and travel destinations are either extremely happy, extremely unhappy, kooks, or are sockpuppets. Still, if a place has a lot of evaluations, you can average out all the responses and find something useful. It pointed us to an excellent BBQ joint, when we drove through the Outer Banks this summer.
Seth Kugel talks about vacationing in the era of TripAdvisor. He admits that it has its uses, but it nostalgic for a pre-TripAdvisor World.
Why have my most exhilarating trips of the last few years been to those rare places TripAdvisor and the rest of the Review-Industrial Complex have not yet documented? There was that week spent in San Juan Teitipac, a little town outside Oaxaca, Mexico, that I chose on the advice of a bus driver. (Still not listed on TripAdvisor as of late December: a marvelous 16th-century church that still packs in worshipers every Sunday.) Or that 40-mile hike along an obscure stretch of Brazilian coastline that I made using nothing more than a Google satellite map. It was my lack of knowledge and planning that forced human interactions, ultimately paying off in cheap beds, free coconuts and indelible memories.
Apt. 11d 
“People who bother to plug in their evaluations of hotels and travel destinations are either extremely happy, extremely unhappy, kooks, or are sockpuppets.”
Um…. I’m a Trip Advisor Senior Contributor. I try to be as honest as possible about what I’m looking for, so I usually comment on the wifi quality and the breakfast buffet. 🙂 You should go in and review the places you’ve been. I also post trip reports on the forums.
I find the info on local Attractions to be insufficient, too, though. For example, if you go to Attractions in London , you’ll find the weirdest Top 4 Attractions–3 of which are West End musicals.
However, we have found some gems there. In Gettysburg, when I couldn’t possibly watch one more frickin’ re-enactment of the battle (they have 500 of them there–done by actors, movies, puppets, stick figures, etc.), we found the excellent Shriver House Museum.
But it was I who found the glorious Zitadelle Spandau in Berlin (well, Spandau), quite by accident. A colleague asked me to find a CD by a Berlin band, and when trying to research them, I found they’d just had a concert at that location. When I looked it up because it sounded neat, I saw the most beautiful fort ever. And apparently they hold concerts there during the summer.
LikeLike
I’m catching up on blog reading this morning, thank you SO MUCH for the link to the article on the coast of PiauĂ! I love to read about my country, obviously and that was a fascinating article!! 🙂
Oh, and my mother owns a travel agency (solely managed by herself and an assistant), she relies on trip advisor and other sites with traveler reviews to choose her hotels and it’s been extremely helpful to her!
LikeLike
I find Seth Kugel’s nostalgia dumb. If you want to get suggestions from your bus driver, get suggestions from your bus driver. I just came back from a work trip and one of the restaurants we tried was suggested by a pedicab driver.
Besides, how is the avoid trip advisor crap any different from avoid the tourist guide? Both are elitist nonsense.
LikeLike