THE TRIPADVISOR EFFECT & Win $200

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We recently embarked on a fairly complicated vacation that involved stays at six hotels, flights on three airlines, four train journeys, and meals in many different restaurants. I feel that a bad hotel or a disappointing meal is such a waste on a holiday, so I’m constantly striving to have the best experience possible.

While planning this trip, I turned to Tripadvisor for the insight and experience offered by fellow travellers. For the most part, I find these reviews reliable. However, we’ve had one disastrous holiday that has made us wary. I booked a resort in Phuket based on overwhelmingly positive reviews of the place as “family-friendly”, only to discover that all the reviewers were into package resorts with vast buffets and endless activities, with staff of every nationality so you easily forget where in the world you actually are.

It wasn’t our sort of place at all, and now I take all reviews with a grain of salt. Tripadvisor might take the guesswork out of booking a place, but it’s not without its downsides.

After our Phuket experience, I’ve developed a process that requires reading all reviews and eliminating any that include the words “romantic”, “tranquil” and “remote”. I also pay attention to where other reviewers are coming from. Retiree “Bob from Brisbane” and the cute couple from Korea are likely to have very different views on what makes a good hotel experience from our little family of four…

Planning our summer holiday literally took days – at times I was paralysed by the number of choices available, and any negative reviews threw me completely. In the end, I spent so long agonising over it all that in some cases I was left with fewer options and had to book whatever was available!

This holiday, we spent a lot of time traipsing about cities, smartphones in hand, desperately trying to find the best places for lunch or dinner. Gone are the days when we would take a chance on a back-alley trattoria or a street vendor selling kebabs out of his living room; and it’s a shame, because in the past they were usually the best meals of the whole trip.

Another side effect of the success of sites like Tripadvisor is just how alluring that little logo can be. Many places that we went to based on high ratings were filled with tourists just like us – waiters spoke to us in English, and menus consisted of Western food to cater to foreign tastes, and were offered in four different languages.

By the end, we found ourselves craving a more authentic experience, so we started befriending locals on the street and seeking out the spots where they liked to eat. Of course, these were the hidden, back-alley trattorias where the specials of the day have ingredients you can’t pronounce and the flavours are unlike anything you’ve ever eaten before. There’s a lot to be said for taking chances.

Since we’ve been home, we’ve been inundated with requests from hotels to fill in surveys or review them on one site or another. I’m also an avid contributor to Tripadvisor and I think it’s a great way to give feedback. But in future I’m going to keep a few places to myself. Some were so special that I don’t want every tourist to know about them, so I’ll give my feedback the old-fashioned way: a generous tip and a return visit next year!