TripAdvisor Review
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- The Good
- Great selection of user reviews
- Pricing comparisons to other travel sites
- In-depth information and user photos
- The Bad
- No bundle booking
TripAdvisor is great for travelers who love to research and prepare for every part of their trip. TripAdvisor offers more booking options — from restaurants to tours to vacation rentals — than any other travel site. That, coupled with its extensive user reviews and own rankings of hotels, airlines, car rentals, cities, etc., make it the most comprehensive travel site available.
- Selection
- Airfare
- Hotels
- Excursions
- Restaurants
- Tours
- Car rental
- Home sharing
- Cruises
You can book anything from an apartment in Spain to a swamp tour in Florida. Unlike other travel sites, you will be able to book your entire vacation in one place, including rental car, excursions, restaurants, etc. In addition, TripAdvisor includes pricing from around the web, making it easy to shop around for the best deal.
- Features
- Customer reviews with filters
- Professional and user photos
- Prices from other travel sites
- Online booking
- Amenity details
- Maps
- Contact information
Hands down the best feature of this site is customer reviews and rankings of hotels, restaurants, and activities. These reviews even include tourist photos, so there is no need to rely on the professional photos when choosing a resort. It gives you a more honest look at any of the places you are looking at. It also gives you contact information for places you are looking at, which some sites hide to force you to book on their site.
- Price Guarantee
- No
While most travel sites will offer a price guarantee with your booking, TripAdvisor does not offer one due to the fact that they are mostly pulling prices from other travel sites.
- Extras
- “Best of” rankings
- Traveler forums
- Roadtrip suggestions
- Help Center
In addition to a great selection and stand-out features, TripAdvisor also has great extras to help you plan a complete vacation. Not only does it offer great user reviews, but it also does research on its own to offer guidance through its “Best of” categories. It also offers great traveler forums that is a wealth of information from other travelers on frequently asked questions about anything from transportation from the airport to typical local weather, all from people who have actually gone.
TripAdvisor: User Reviews
TripAdvisor: Comments
There are many, many travel website to choose from these days, which can make it difficult to find one that fits your needs. Generally, most of these sites end up being very similar. TripAdvisor, on the other hand, breaks the mold a little when it comes to travel site. While it offers the same search functionality as other travel sites, its huge bank of user reviews and other extras make it stand out from the rest.
How Does TripAdvisor Work
TripAdvisor is pretty straight forward. You go to the site, type in what you are searching for, like hotels in Miami, and a list of recommended hotels will pop up. Same goes for anything else you search, from car rentals to cruises. It includes information including location, amenities and other information about the hotel/tour/rental.
This is where TripAdvisor starts to differ. In addition to the basics, it offers pricing information from all the other travel sites around the web, starting with the lowest price. It also gives you a link so you can book on a competing travel site, which is an option most travel sites don’t offer.
The best difference is the heart of TripAdvisor: User reviews. TripAdvisor has a great bank of user reviews for almost every hotel, tour, car rental and flight it has on its site. These user reviews can go into great detail about important things you need to know, like the condition of the rooms, customer service, kid friendliness, the best time of year to go, and other essentials. These reviews are what makes TripAdvisor one of the most popular travel sites on the web.
Can I Trust TripAdvisor Reviews?
Generally, TripAdvisor does a good job of looking over the reviews to see if they are legitimate before posting them. Businesses are also given an opportunity to reply to any reviews, giving them the opportunity to thank the user for good reviews or to contest bad reviews or offer apologies or compensation for mistakes they made.
The one issue with user reviews is that people’s experience with a business can vary wildly, depending on their personality, the time of year, the current management, etc., so it produce very different reviews. Luckily, TripAdvisor boasts over 500 million reviews on its site, so instead of focusing on one review, you can usually tell the quality of a business based on how many good reviews versus how many bad reviews it has.
Common Reviews About TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is one of the most popular travel sites in the world. With over 300 million users and 500 million reviews, it is one of the most-used travel sites, which generally puts it at the top of the list when it comes to professional reviews.
User reviews of the site can be mixed, though. While many rave about TripAdvisor and its honest take on travel, some are not convinced that all reviews on the site are 100% accurate, and they would be correct. Besides blatant promotion, there is no real way for TripAdvisor to determine the fake reviews from the real ones, which is a similar problem that Yelp has.
Anyone can register to be a member, and you never have to prove that you stayed at a hotel or even traveled to a destination. While TripAdvisor does have some safeguards against fraudulent reviews, it can’t police all 500 million reviews, not to mention the user forums. So businesses could create fake profiles to boost their ratings, while competitors can do the same to drag ratings down.
If you want to avoid being fooled by a fake review, the best thing to do is read a large swatch of reviews to get a clearer picture. If 10 people compliment a business’ customer service, and one person pans it, then the business probably has pretty good customer service.
Can I Get Deals on TripAdvisor?
For many years, TripAdvisor did not offer its own bookings through the site and only offered options to book through third-party sites. Recently, TripAdvisor started offering its own booking option for many hotels, excursions, etc. Even so, the site really doesn’t offer any deals of its own to its readers.
TripAdvisor does, however, collect the best prices from travel sites around the web, so you can often find the best travel deals on the web through TripAdvisor, even if the deal is offered on another travel site. The best part is that TripAdvisor also organizes the prices it displays based on the cheapest price, so you always know that you are getting the best deal.
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