There’s a lot going on outside of what we cover in detail here, so today we’ll take a step back and look at the travel and real estate news for Latin America.

- Argentina seems to have backpedaled on its unpopular decision to start soaking North American and British visitors an extra $130 or more for the pleasure of spending their money in the cash-strapped country. For the moment anyway, no announcements or collections have taken place. It looks like they have figured out that travel will nosedive when word gets out, especially for families.

- Costa Rica has added a new property tax on houses and condominiums valued at more than $180,800 according to International Living. It’s either a Robin Hood play or a contribution to a good cause depending on how you look at it, with the money going to build affordable housing for locals currently living in shantytowns. Either way, it’s probably not going to impact whether you buy there or not: at a rate of .25% up to $1.36 million, the tax on a $500,000 condo would be $1,250 per year. Still that is far higher than any other country in the region and Costa Rica already has some of the most expensive coastal real estate between Los Cabos and the bottom of South America.

- The always buzz-worthy Francis Ford Coppola has opened another lodging property, this time in Argentina. We won’t be reviewing it since it’s more a rental villa than a hotel, but Jardin Escondido is in the artsy Palermo Soho neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It’s a three-level townhouse that can sleep 13, with a large pool courtyard.

- Conde Nast Traveler just put out its 2009 Hot List for hotels. The Latin American coverage is pretty skimpy, but that’s okay. We’ll continue to bring you detailed reviews of consistently great hotels rather than the trendy flavors of the moment. They did touch on a few we’ve reviewed already though in Luxury Latin America, including Casitas del Colca (Peru), Inkaterra La Casona (Peru), and St. Regis Punta Mita (Mexico).

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.

The latest results of Travel & Leisure’s annual reader’s poll are out and incredibly, there are only three hotels on there not already reviewed in detail in Luxury Latin America. One is a mystery that must be a ballot-stuffing anomoly (Le Meridien Cancun), another is a business hotel that gets so-so ratings from our correspondents (Hyatt Santiago). The other is the Four Seasons in Mexico City, which we were slated to have a review of up six months ago until our correspondent there fell ill. She’s back in action and it’s coming soon–I mean it this time–along with a batch of other fine hotels in that city.

There have been some shifts in the rankings this year though and it looks like a lot more readers have had Mexico on their itinerary (12 of the 25 entries) and Belize got nudged out entirely this time. The Bristol Hotel in Panama snuck in at number 24 though, just ahead of the Fairmont Acapulco Princess.

The interesting move this year was the Tides Zihuatanejo (pictured here) popping into the top-5 soon after its makeover from the already nice Villa del Sol. Peru also made a nice showing this time. Inkaterra Machu Picchu Hotel, formerly known as Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel, came out of nowhere into the top-10 and Miraflores Park Hotel popped in at 15. See our detailed reviews by following any of the links above, or see the full rundown here on the survey.

If you’ve traveled a lot in this region, give us your take on the results!

In the process of cleaning off my desk I came upon this article I had ripped out of Conde Nast Traveler on “green hotels,” appropriately called False Advertising. Just as half the products and herbal concoctions in Korea claimed to be “good for health” when I was there, every hotel with an ample PR budget seems to be falling all over itself to say, “We’re green!” Witness the writer’s experience in Costa Rica:

When I asked the manager of one so-called eco-hotel what makes his property green, he responded, “Well, for one thing, all of our rooms have air-conditioning, but mostly I think it’s the ocean view.” The proprietor of a similar establishment, when asked the same question, told me that her assistant manager was a volunteer firefighter in his spare time. Among the massive all-inclusive resorts and water-guzzling golf courses of the gated “Papagayo Eco-Development,” I spoke to reservationists who assured me of strong commitments to the environment on the part of their employers, but when pressed could point to nothing specific.

Unfortunately, it’s only fair for me to admit that the more luxurious a hotel is, the more wasteful it is usually going to be. A budget guesthouse isn’t going to have its own huge generators and the guests are probably not drinking eight plastic bottles of water a day from their always-on minibar. The guests there are going to use their sheets and towels more than one night—often they don’t have a choice! But a big hotel can do other things right when they’re getting $500 a night.

The article notes that Lapa Rios Ecolodge can afford to transport items 230 miles to a recycling center. Orient-Express carted decades worth of trash away from Machu Picchu when it set up operations in Peru and is at the forefront of keeping the area clean because of its Hiram Bingham train and the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge. A big new development I just visited in Honduras is the first one on its bay to recycle all waste water on site and use solar power to heat its hot water. These things cost money.

Some efforts don’t cost money though and are more a matter of attitude, of really caring what happens to the land and the people surrounding the place where tourists are sequestered.

I’ll leave it with this quote from the False Advertising article:

“I think it really boils down to one question: How does a business contribute to the conservation of the local community?” says Ronald Sanabria, of the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. “If a business—even one in a city—can’t provide you with a concrete response, it’s not practicing ecotourism and there is no substance to any claim that it is. It’s up to the consumer to decide if that’s acceptable.”

Have you ever paid $250 for a bottle of liquor, thinking that premium price equates to extra quality? Hate to break it to you, but you’ve probably been duped by crafty marketing.

As this newspaper article (which appeared in longer form in the Wall Street Journal) notes, after a certain point you’re just paying for prettier packaging and a desire to impress someone.

“There’s an illusion pushed that when you spend more, you get more quality…But there is usually a plateau to quality in high-end goods. The difference between Hennessy’s XO Cognac ($95) and Paradis ($350) has far more to do with other intangibles like greed, ego, and vanity.”

The worst offenders overall are vodka producers, who try to pretend that their tasteless, colorless alcohol is better than the other guy’s and is worth $50 a bottle and more. This great article, Make Mine a 02001, offers a hilarious insight on where much of this “premium vodka” comes from: the same factories cranking out industrial solvents, mouthwash, hairspray, and astringents. Here’s my favorite part:

I went to a vodka tasting hosted by the head of a prominent luxury liquor house. It was an exercise meant to dispel the notion that the differences among vodkas are illusory. But after being walked through the vodkas on the table with elaborate descriptions of the characteristics of each, I found myself hard-pressed to discern much difference. So I asked the executive to demonstrate the differences by tasting the vodkas blind. He couldn’t even identify his own flagship brand.

If you’re going to get the most for your money, aim for the middle: the $35 to $50 bottle of rum, anejo tequila, or bourbon that has aged the ideal number of years (3 to 7 depending on which spirit), or the $40 to $75 Scotch that has aged for 12 years (colder climates require more time). Too much oak can be a bad thing though, so don’t assume more aging is automatically better. Although Reserva de la Familia is a great tequila and a Pappy Van Winkle bourbon is pretty special, most spirits that have spent too long in a barrel taste like as much like the barrel as the original liquor. Experiment and learn what you really like, then buy more. Pass by the $250 showpieces with boxes and gold leaf and buy five bottles of great stuff you and your guests will really enjoy instead.