Can you trust the hotel reviews on TripAdvisor or other “user-generated content” sites?

Since I’m a travel editor, people are always telling me about their own vacation experiences, about resorts that went above the call of duty and hotels that failed miserably. At least once a month, someone will bring up how they were duped by the reviews on TripAdvisor or, even more worrisome, they’ll tell me about a hotel manager who pushed them to post a good review. In one case (a competitor to a hotel we’ve reviewed here), the manager offered to comp the dinner tab if the couple would post something online before they checked out. It’s a sly—and inexpensive—marketing move to be sure, but it makes you wonder how many glowing reviews got there by some mutual back-scratching. It’s a problem that TripAdvisor can never truly police or prevent.

Then there are the fake reviews written directly by the people who work at the hotel, or their PR agency people, like this one called out by HotelChatter. Or this one. Hint: when the words used in the review and the same ones on the hotels’ website, something’s fishy…

The real problem with this system though, is that you have no idea of the tastes or traveling experiences of the people writing the reviews. Some are accustomed to staying at Day’s Inn, but they got put up at a Hilton for their convention and thought it was fabulous. Or they’re used to taking cruises so that 350-square-foot standard they stayed in was “really spacious.” Many business travel road warriors actually like predictable rooms that are the same in every city. Some people hate everything. Some are easily pleased. Some are foodies. Some think Applebees is “going out for a romantic dinner.”

Do you trust each of them to tell you which hotel is “the best in town” or is the best for you? Remember too that the hotel ranked #1 for a city in TripAdvisor is usually the one that had the highest ratio of good reviews to bad, so places that are perceived as a great value will often trump the expensive ones most reviewers can’t afford. Sure, it’ll help you see which establishments should be avoided entirely (like this Dirtiest Hotels list), but collectively treating the reviews as authoritative can be trouble. I’ve heard a lot of after-stay complaints that started with the phrase, “The TripAdvisor reviews all seemed pretty good but…”

I’ll hold the sales pitch for Luxury Latin America except to say all our reviews are written by experienced, well-regarded travel writers who have a keen eye and a wealth of experience evaluating places to stay. They’ve seen plenty of great and plenty of lousy on multiple continents and are qualified to tell the difference. When they say a hotel is the best in town, it’s because they’ve actually been to the other top ones and can make a qualified comparison. “User-generated content” is a boon for publishers who don’t want to pay any pesky writers, but often they get what they pay for.

We just posted a review of a the most notable new luxury hotel in Peru to come along in a while: Inkaterra’s La Casona Hotel in Cusco.

This is the first hotel to give any real competition to the venerable Hotel Monasterio, so it’s a welcome addition to the scene for high-end travelers not satisfied with the Libertador or Casa Andina Private Collection. It’s an intimate historic building with plenty of space behind your closed door. All of its 11 rooms are spacious open suites, with baths almost as large as the sleeping area. These are definitely the most splashed-out rooms in town as well, with all the latest and greatest gadgets and radiant heat flooring.

Both the public rooms and the guest rooms are tastefully stocked with Spanish Colonial antiques, oil paintings, and custom carved wood doors. I stayed across the plaza and didn’t get a chance to try the restaurant or bar here, but judging by the attention to detail elsewhere, teatime and dinner time should both be a treat. See the full review of Inkaterra La Casona.

There are a lot of articles on Nicaragua that follow a similar theme of “Gee whiz, the people here aren’t shooting at each other after all and aren’t these buildings pretty?”

Thankfully this Nicaragua on the Verge piece in the March Travel + Leisure is from a writer (Kurt Andersen) who is returning, not just dropping in for the first time to adjust his preconceptions. He was there as a reporter in ‘83 when things were ugly, but now he’s taken his family there, despite the puzzled looks from friends and relatives.

There’s a great line in the article that explains a lot about why Latin America is still a bargain, even for luxury travelers. “Friends tended toward bafflement or alarm, incorrectly imagining that the region between Mexico and South America, apart from Costa Rica and maybe Belize, remains an iffy place to vacation.”

He raves about Hotel La Gran Francia in Grenada pictured above, where it’s—how often do you see this in T+L—”doubles from $100.” He also gives a nod to the Intercontinental in Managua and makes a trip out to the Corn Islands. It’ll be a while before we’re covering those in Luxury Latin America, but definitely on my short list for a vacation visit.