Hotels Reviews - Timing, Bias & Judgement
Can you trust a hotel review to be accurate? Not really. But you may be able to get a good idea about a hotel, resort or spa by reading enough reviews and then peering between the lines.
Paid Reviews - Some organizations and large web sites pay reviewers to travel around, stay at hotels and write reviews about them. Nice, huh! Nice for them, but what will those reviews tell you? You simply can't know .. because you don't know the motivation for the organization nor the mind set of the reviewer.
Wear and tear - Just like people, hotels age .. and usually that process is not so graceful. Tourists are notoriously hard on hotel rooms. Look at the date of the stay .. sorry, I don't date my own, but that is why I supply additional reviews.
After being unable to find an electrical outlet for a laptop in one hotel, the operator told me they now use hard wired appliances. That keeps Thai quests from plugging in flat-irons and ironing clothing on the carpeting. Sure enough, I have neen a number of "iron shaped" burn spots on hotel room carpeting.
Guest Reviews and Comments
Culled Reviews - If you see a series of reviews where every person writes adoring reviews .. either they are reviewing the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok .. or you may only be seeing positive reviews. I know for a fact that some sites will not publish negative reviews.
*Actually, I don't do negative reviews either, but my reviews are my honest opinion of the property at the time of my last visit.
Timing - Hotels and resorts change. Owners change. Managers change. Facilities age. Comments that were accurate 5 years ago may not be so today.
Biased Reviews - You may never know why a guest's comments are biased. Maybe s/he had a bad experience at checkout and made comments excessively negative.
Or perhaps s/he became 'smitten' with a staff member and still sees the accommodation with rose colored memories.
Judgement - What one person expects from a property may not equal what you expect. Maybe they don't have a broad enough frame of reference. Maybe you are more demanding than the person commenting.
So what's the answer? Read lots of reviews. Try to determine whether or not the person was a real guest or a professional reviewer.
If the review is beautifully written, it may well be a sales pitch.
Look at the points the commentator made .. especially angry comments. I have seen very few properties that have not one good thing about them.
So does Dave get paid for reviews. Sadly, no!
Does Dave announce he is doing a review? Never.
Can I trust Dave's reviews? Um .. up to you.
Some thoughts on hotel ratings?
