Adam Raphael the editor of the Good Hotel Guide always has an axe to grind about Tripadvisor. Here is his latest comment which I have received in a news letter which points out some of the anomalies in the Tripadvisor rating system.
I actually find it quite useful but you have to read between the lines. What it is good for is up to the minute information that a guide book can never give.
"It is perhaps in that blithe spirit that one should regard the latest TripAdvisor awards announced under a Daily Mail banner headline: 'World’s best hotel? A £35 B&B in Llandudno.' The winner, 11-bedroom Lauriston Court, according to the Mail’s report, ‘beat 650,000 others world wide’. So far, so dandy, but how did Lauriston Court win its award? Apparently more than 400 people rated it as ‘excellent’. How many of these people actually stayed there? Your guess is as good as mine. TripAdvisor doesn’t even pretend to know.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that TA’s prize-winners do not deserve their gongs. Some are undoubtedly good places. About half of TA’s 25 top British hotels have an entry in the Good Hotel Guide. But the basis on which these awards are handed out is distinctly odd. For instance, Rudding Park Hotel, which has a Shortlist entry in the Guide, was fourth in TA’s list of top world hotels after 1,397 people rated it as 'excellent'. Yet the Four Seasons at Hualalai in Hawaii, reckoned by TA to be the best hotel in the world, was rated as 'excellent' by just over half as many as endorsed Rudding Park. So if it is not quantity, how are these awards decided? As TA doesn’t know, and doesn’t care to check whether its correspondents are genuine, let alone reliable, it is clearly not quality."
