Is TripAdvisor Irrelevant?

Have sites that rate hotels and resorts become irrelevant? Sites like TripAdvisor (and its parent company, Expedia) and Hotels.com have come under scrutiny for having fake reviews planted by in an effort to boost their rating. These fake reviews get posted by employees of the hotel and by companies contracted by the hotel to improve their reputation.

TripAdvisor claims to take measures to weed out the bogus reviews, but the problem is obviously a difficult one to tackle. The credibility and objectivity of the reviewer is a difficult thing to determine in most cases. TripAdvisor reviews rate hotels for a number of different criteria, which provides a rounded assessment of the experience. It indicates how many posts the reviewer has contributed on TripAdvisor, and it ranks the hotel against other hotels in its city /location.

Its relevance is also undermined by reviewers with unrealistic expectations. Today, I looked at a review for the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort in Waikiki, Honolulu. Out of approximately 2000 reviews, 81% are positive. However, of the negative reviews, most cite complaints about "too many tourists" or the price markups in hotel restaurants and shops. The reviewers' expectations seem to be out of alignment with the reality of staying at a 5-star resort on Waikiki beach.

I love the power of online communities when they highlight high-value companies, and hold low-value companies accountable. It appears to be more necessary than ever to incorporate a system for assessing the credibility or reputation of the reviewer so the followers of TripAdvisor get a better sense of which reviews to trust. Ebay has continued to refine its system for policing the buyers and sellers in its community. Help me cut through the noise and find the reviewers that are well travelled and can provide inbiased, insightful, articulate reviews ... so they can turn me on to hotels that are hidden gems and masters of customer service.