TripAdvisor.com

As some of you know, this summer will be my 18th birthday, and since I was little, me and the rest of my family have always said, when this summer comes around we’ll go on a special family with us all, and have the ‘trip’ of a lifetime. For years I have been fascinated by the likes of New York, Paris, Prague and even Australia and when it came down to planning this trip, New York seemed to be the destination that we all liked the look of.
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...due to the fact, we have quite a small budget, and we really cannot seem to find a good hotel to stay in within our budget. We have found a few places that are within our budget, but then when I realised we want to know if it’s a good hotel, I need to look at reviews. I had a quick look on Ciao, but only could find 3 reviews for this particular hotel we were looking at, then I put in the name of the hotel and reviews into Google and this website ... more

As some of you know, this summer will be my 18th birthday, and since I was little, me and the rest of my family have always said, when this summer comes around we’ll go on a special family with us all, and have the ‘trip’ of a lifetime. For years I have been fascinated by the likes of New York, Paris, Prague and even Australia and when it came down to planning this trip, New York seemed to be the destination that we all liked the look of.

We are yet to book the holiday, mainly due to the fact, we have quite a small budget, and we really cannot seem to find a good hotel to stay in within our budget. We have found a few places that are within our budget, but then when I realised we want to know if it’s a good hotel, I need to look at reviews. I had a quick look on Ciao, but only could find 3 reviews for this particular hotel we were looking at, then I put in the name of the hotel and reviews into Google and this website came up. Since then, I have barely been off it.

What is tripAdvisor?

TripAdvisor is a free site which features free travel information, it’s main job is to host travel information in the way of reviews and much, much more, all of which is designed for you to plan your trip.

The website is completely free, and the reviews on the site are people’s opinions, they get no revenue for them, they are just posting their opinions to make sure the user on the site has a good time on their trip, whether that is recommending that particular hotel, or not.

The site covers more than 212,000 hotels, 74,000 attractions and 30,000 destinations (these numbers were taken from Wikipedia so please don’t quote me on this).

The site is probably the largest travel community on the net; it has been going for 9 years now as it began in February 2000, and it will make sure that you have the best trip possible and as nothing is biased or anything like that, you get the most honest reviews about the hotels or destinations ever.

The Website- Home Page

One of the most important things that I was taught in my web development class last year was that colours matter on a webpage. This site has managed to use under 3 colours and still is able to keep the webpage interesting.

The logo is a owl shape logo with tripadvisor next to it, this sticks out and I’m sure after being on this site, you will recognise this logo. The website is set out brilliantly. When you get onto the home page you will find many different things for you to do.

The first thing your eye is drawn to is the search bar. This search bar is probably the easiest way to find what you want, when you type in something it gives you a range of things to choose from.

Then you can plan the perfect trip, this is the main section on the page, it allows you to choose things from Hotels, Flights, Restaurants, Things To Do and Cruises. To the right you type in the City you want to see and depending on what you want to do you’ll either choose from different things, choose the dates you are going to be there and much more.

On the far right of the page you can browse by destination, so for example if you choose United States it’ll bring you to a new page, which lets you choose what you want to do, if you want adventure, it’ll take you to a new page where you can browse through a list of adventurous things to do within the United States and so on. Like the other pages it gives you more on the united states, by this it means things to do before you go, restaurants, map and traveller photos.

If you scroll down further you can find the quick links, this section allows you to do a lot more. I’ll talk a bit more about these below.

Search Bar (Location Results: New York)

For example, if I type in New York it takes you to a new page. At the top of the page you have links to different websites on the Internet; this is called New York Travel Deals. Just below that you will find the location results. The page is showing 1-10 of 250 for New York. The first search is New York, United States. Below that it gives you different links from Hotels, Vacation Rentals, Flights, Forums and Maps. You can choose whether to click on New York or one of these sub headings.

To the left of this, you can refine your search, here it gives you many things you can refine your search with, for example, Hotels, Restaurants, Reviews, Overviews and Attractions. Each of these has a number by them saying how many particular searches these links will bring up. Last but not least, if you scroll down a bit you will find a new section called ‘What Our Users Are Saying’ here it’ll give you things from reviews, traveller articles and traveller lists of the selected destination that you have entered.

Once you have clicked on this link, it’ll take you to the new page; at the top it says Visiting New York. Here it gives you the option to pretty much plan your trip. At one point it has a section called ‘Looking for New York holiday ideas’, here it gives you some of the best things to do in New York, from family fun, history and culture and the most important thing, shopping.

Below that it gives you traveller advice on New York, here it gives you the top rated hotels and then you can search all hotels in New York if you click and extra link, below that is another link called ‘Things To Do’ which if you click on it keeps you on the same page but extends and shows you the top rated attractions in NYC, you can again click on an extended link. There are three more things that extend but I’ll talk about them more in detail in a minute.

On the left is a panel called Visiting New York, this section gives you more links to click on. These links are the following:

Hotels in New York
Vactation Rentals
New York Flights
New York Special Offers

Below it gives you ‘More On New York’, this is probably my favourite section at the moment, so I’ll go into more detail with some of them, these links are:

Before You Go

This section is filled with articles about New York, the first box you will see is called Traveller Articles here it gives you Background, this includes things like a Budget Travel article which tells you all of the cheap inns and places in New York, underneath is Culture, then Restaurants, Recommended Reading which gives you lists of books to read before you go and finally Weather and When which tells you the best times to go to New York. It then gives you a link to view more traveller articles.

Below that is a new box called United States for Foreign Visitors, here it helps you loads, I have already read this section and it helps you with Banks and Money, Emergencies, Tipping & Equicate and finally important phrases, which even tells you to go as far as speaking like Tobey McGuire to get people in America to understand you.

It then gives you Traveller Forum which is people asking questions and then other people answering the questions. This I’m sure I’ll use closer to my holiday when I’m trying to work out where we want to go and how long it’s all going to take. Finally below that you have the best web links, this is pretty self explanatory, it gives you all of the best web links that they can find on New York.

Things to Do

Depending on what place you are searching for, this section can either be huge like the one I’m looking at now, or tiny if I was looking at my home village as there is literally nothing to do there, even though it’s visited by billions of tourists all the time. You can search attractions by city, for example it gives you the chance to looks at New York City attractions, Brooklyn attractions and Bronx attractions.

Once you have clicked on the one you want, it brings you to a new page which features articles on The Best Traveller Advice. This section gives you a list of the best things to do, there is one article called New York city Family Travel and this gives advice on what to do if you come with a family.

If you go back onto the main page of this section you will find a box called ‘The Best Things To Do’, again how much you get depends on where you are looking at, this section shows you thinks like ‘Top of the Rock Observation Deck’, when you click on it, it gives you lists of reviews on this particular attraction. A must if you are planning a trip like New York in such a small time, you really don’t want to waste any minute of your stay within the city.

Restaurants

This is probably one of the pages I will be checking just before we go and probably when we are in New York, we are on a limited budget, and none of us really ‘enjoy’ really fatty foods, so hopefully this restaurant page will help us find good restaurants which serve good food within the budget that we want. You get a map at the top of the page which shows you where they all are, then you can filter restaurants by all cuisines and all recommended for, and then finally the prices you want to pay for your food.

If you don’t have a particular price range or cuisine that you want, then it gives you a list of all of the restaurants in the city, the first one on this list I’m looking at is called Per Se, and it serves American and French cuisine with a price of $17-£68. This doesn’t really look like somewhere which I would enjoy, but you get the gist of things.

Map

If you click on this link, a separate page opens up and you are taken to a page which is showing you the hotels of New York City or wherever you are searching. In the centre is the map and to the left are the hotels on the left. You can click on one and it’ll show you where it is on the map, you can also check the rates of the hotel, it’ll tell you if the hotel is available during the dates you want to go.

Traveller Photos

This section shows you all the pictures that they’ve taken of New York, some of them are breathtaking, if you are looking for a particular hotel, and then you should be able to get some good pictures on that particular page.

Traveller Videos

Pretty self explanatory, from videos of Greenwich Village, Trip to The USA, Shea Stadium and even Upper West Side Story. These look brilliant and I will take a closer look when it gets closer to the trip.

Forum¬

This works in the same way every forum works, each city has it’s own forum and people can ask questions like where to eat, or how to get to a particular place and then it’ll be answered by either locals or people that know the city. I will probably be using this nearer the time.

Quick Links

Here is the section where you can do many things; this is where you begin to add more to this site. The first thing you can do is ‘Share Your Experiences’ here it allows you to do the following, Write a Review, Ask A Question/Browse Forum, Write a Traveller Article and finally Create a Traveller List. Each of these are pretty easy to do, and should take you know time at all, just as easy as it is to paste a review into Ciao or Dooyoo I suppose. I’m not going to go too much into this section, but it is simple to use and it allows you to interact with the website.

Traveller Photos

They always say a photo is worth a 1000 words, and in this case it can make you choose a hotel or decline the hotel. Some of the pictures I’ve seen on this website have been awful, of course the main thing that you look at when you walk into a room is the cleanliness of the room, some of the pictures I’ve seen blood stains on the floor, dirty linen (this picture was taken just after they were shown to their room) and then the dreaded bathroom, I’ve worked in many hotels in my years of working and the one thing we were told is the bathroom must be clean, sparkling even, this must not be the case in America, however you have to think, the hotels I’ve worked in had 19 rooms at most, the hotel I’m looking at now has over 650 rooms so you can imagine how much work it is for the maids that are working.

Look at the traveller photos instead of the professional photographs because PHOTOGRAPHS DO LIE now in this age, I was asked to take some for one of the hotels I worked in, I took the pictures home and had to tweak them to make them look amazing, it’s pretty fabulous what a computer allows you to do nowadays, and this is what the owners of the hotel will do to lure you in, the traveller photographs however, do not lie.

Extras

Just as I was finishing up this review, making sure that I had not got any spelling mistakes or made a fool of myself in anyway, I found this little addition to the website. It wasn’t very hard to miss, but it is one of the best things about the website.

At the top of the home page, you’ll find a list of links, from Home Page, Hotels, Flights, Restaurants, Holiday Ideas and then this little gem, Free Travel Guides, here you can search for City’s within the world and it’ll bring up a PDF document which gives you a printable booklet on all things to do with the destination of your choice. This includes restaurants, and little snippets from reviews and much, much more. This is a great little addition and it is something that I’m sure I’ll be printing out at a later date.

My Experience

I have liked the look of this site for years, I went for a job in my village last summer at a B&B and ended up on this site before accepting the job to see what the people were like and what the rooms were like, the reviews did not help, because I accepted the job, with awful pay and did all the hours in the world, because of what I was having to do, I had to quit due to a problem I’ve had with my back since a car crash a few years ago. Since then if I do something too strenuous, I can’t move for weeks, I think I should sue.

The website has reviews on probably every hotel up and down the country and across the world; I have yet to search for a hotel without any reviews on it. This makes it one of the best travel websites and I would usually use sites like Ciao or Dooyoo for reviews, however when it comes to travel this site excels them amazingly well.

¬¬¬_The Website Layout_

The website is set out very simply, the colours used are brilliant and simple, and finding your way about the website is pretty simple enough. The site is pretty self explanatory, it allows for you to spend as long as you want searching for everything you may need or want to help you plan your holiday.

Are The Reviews Helpful?

This is a very hard question to answer, mainly because yes each review that someone posts is very helpful, when it comes to hotels, all you need to know is a few things, are the staff friendly? How clean are the rooms? What’s the location like? Any problems? And each review on this site answers these questions brilliantly.

However, the hotels that I’ve been looking at in New York have such mixed reviews it’s very hard to make a decision whether to go to a particular hotel or not, for example, the one I’m looking at now, the first review or the most recent reviews title is ‘Wouldn’t Stay Here Ever Again’ and then goes into great details about why not, but the one below is the complete opposite with the title Great Location. So in answer to the question, the reviews are very helpful, however the hotels that the reviews are based on don’t seem to give the same service to everyone.

Planning My Trip

I’m still undecided about what hotel to choose, we have so many to choose from, but due to the fact we’re going to New York with a disabled person, we don’t really want to be too far from Times Square where everything seems to be, but you are looking at paying a lot more for that particular space. As well as that the hotels that are a few blocks or so away from Times Square really seem to have so many mixed reviews it’s ridiculous, the reviews of the hotels near where I live (where I’ve worked before) are pretty easy to decide whether you want to go or not, there is only a small percentage of bad reviews, however the ones I’ve looked at in New York seem to have mixed reviews across the board, because of this the site hasn’t really helped me in the aspect of choosing a hotel. I think in the end of things we’ll just choose a hotel and pray that it turns out to be good and if there are any problems, well, we’ll set my nan on them.

The rest of the site is amazingly helpful, especially the articles, when it comes to these, I’ve read every article possible on the site to do with New York, and then used the site to check out reviews on particular attractions and because of some reviews, I have probably saved myself a lot of money and time, because some o the places I wanted to see, I was shocked at the amount of bad reviews that they seem to be getting, if it’s going to be terrible, even though I want to see it, it’s really not worth my time.

The articles tell you everything from ‘Subway Safety’, what to do in New York, the restaurants that you must or must not check out, and probably the most important one for America, how much to tip for each person. I think this is going to cause a lot of trouble when we’re on holiday, I know they don’t earn a lot over there, but I really don’t believe in people expecting a tip, especially considering in every job I’ve ever worked in, American’s are the worst tippers ever. This article will help us loads when we are on holiday, because we don’t want to be telling a story of someone chasing us down the street because we didn’t give them a tip.

All in all, it hasn’t been too helpful when it comes to looking at hotels in America, I have been unable to find one hotel with more good reviews than bad reviews, and this is not looking good at the moment.

Final Opinion

As a computing student I have been told to take a lot of websites with a pinch of salt, Wikipedia to name one, and this is another site that I will be taking with a pinch of salt. It reads just like Ciao or Dooyoo does, however it’s all just based on travel and I don’t believe the writers get anything for their reviews. These reviews however, have confused me, they really have. How can one hotel have so much wrong with it, but at the same time have so much right with it? Are me and my family going to be the ones that gets the horrible side of things or the good side of things, I think when you are spending this kind of money on a hotel, you really want the best place possible within your budget, I think we will be going with the cheapest option, because it does have a great location, but I just hope I come back and give you a review which is good not bad like the ones on the site have been.

The site is very helpful however, if you want to check out a place, then it’s perfect and I’m sure it’ll help loads, the articles help tremendously especially if you are going abroad to a country you’ve never been too before, because there values and rules may be different and this page will help you and make sure that you don’t make a fool of yourself with the tipping or asking for something and them not understanding you.

If you are planning to go on holiday in the summer and there is a lot of reviews on Ciao or Dooyoo then I would really read them first before you go onto this site, I have no idea why, but they just seem a lot more helpful than the ones that you get on this site, plus you won’t have so many to sift through so you can make up your opinion on a certain amount of reviews, this site however you are looking at hundreds, possibly even thousands of reviews and then they’re seems to be the same percentage of bad reviews as the good reviews, I haven’t found the reviews on the hotels as helpful as I would like, I think this may just be down to the fact I really want a good hotel and even when I read the good reviews, I can just imagine all of the bad things I’ve heard about the hotel, because of this the site hasn’t really made my mind up for me, which I would have expected it to as it is a ‘travel site’.

If you are looking at a small place with a small amount of hotels which you can choose from, then I’m sure this review will help plenty, however if you are looking at a large city with millions of hotels (yes I’m exaggerating, just), then the site might not be as helpful as you would like.

All in all, it really depends on how you take reviews, if you take the positive and throw away the negative then you really will enjoy this site. If like me, the idea of dried blood stains on the carpet in one of the rooms or a view of a brick wall puts you off, then this site is not as helpful as I would have liked.

Navigation: 8/10 (Pretty easy to use)
Review Quality: 5/10 (Not as good as Ciao or Dooyoo, most are not very helpful)
Article Quality: 10/10 (Fantastic addition to the site, my favourite part)

Overall rate of Website: 7/10

It is a good website, and I’m sure it helps out a lot of people, for my trip however it’s made me more confused of where I’m going to stay and what I’m going to do, mainly because of such a mixed base of reviews. This is no one’s problem but the hotels that allow people to go away with such horrible opinions of the hotel, the one thing I have noticed is that us Brits seem to be more caring towards people staying in hotels, I have heard way too many stories within hotels in America about them not giving two craps about air con not working, or leaving dirty towels, let’s just hope my trip goes better than the reviews I have read on this site. I for one don’t want a bad trip on my 18th.

(C) Kirsty 2009

I hope you enjoy this review, my latest review didn't do as well as I would have hoped so I hope this one does. I hope you enjoyed reading it.  

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