Planning a trip online can be a great way to save money, but it can also be an exercise in information overload. Any website that helps travelers cut through the puffery and get candid, independent travel advice is invaluable. This is the premise behind award-winning TripAdvisor.com, a free forum for ordinary travelers to post or browse personal reviews of places to stay, eat and see around the world. From its inception in 2000 as a search engine for online travel information, TripAdvisor and its burgeoning list of branded sites - which include SeatGuru.com, SmarterTravel.com, and CruiseCritic.com - have grown into the largest travel community on the Internet, drawing between 25 million and 30 million visitors a month, the site says.
The Basics
Start using the site by entering the name of a destination, hotel, restaurant or attraction. From there, proceed to reviews (from the most recent to the oldest), rankings and links to online booking sites. For each destination, viewers can find basic trip information, including a destination overview and travel tips on topics like local culture, public transportation and neighborhoods - all user-generated. Anyone can write a review. All you need to do is register on the site.
In addition to reviews of each destination's hotels and restaurants, a popularity index ranks hotels according to the "quantity and quality of content" on TripAdvisor. A particularly useful tool for budget-minded travelers is the advanced hotel selection tool, which lets travelers see a destination's most popular hotels by price, neighborhood and rating. Hotels are rated from 1 to 5 (5 being the best) on such criteria as cleanliness, service, value and the types of travelers best suited to the place. Reviews are often accompanied by photos of hotel rooms, meals, views and other pertinent visuals that can be more revealing than the written review.
Other Major Services
- Rate Checker: Check hotel pricing and availability from multiple sites
- "My Trips" folders: Save hotel, restaurant and attraction reviews, as well as maps and photos to a personal folder.
- Inside Pages: View user-generated online guidebooks on more than 24,000 destinations worldwide.
- TripWatch: Sign up for e-mail alerts on requested hotels, attractions and cities.
A Few Competitors
- IgoUgo.com: Reader-written reviews, trip stories and photos of hotels, restaurants and attractions.
- Hotelshark.com: A small-scale lodging guide featuring guest-written hotel reviews.
What Makes TripAdvisor.com Noteworthy
The recipient of about 1,500 reviews daily, TripAdvisor is considered the largest guest-review-based travel site. Thousands of personal reviews and consumer ratings are distilled to create rankings of hotels, restaurants and attractions - rankings that are in constant flux due to the ongoing flow of reader-generated content.
A number of controls are used to help weed out false reviews or those "seeded" by hotel staff (as well as negative reviews posted by competitors). TripAdvisor also offers management the opportunity to comment on and respond to reviews. The Website enjoys a high customer satisfaction rating - some 97% of users report that they are likely to use TripAdvisor to plan their next trip, according to a company survey.
Ownership
TripAdvisor.com is a subsidiary of Expedia, Inc. The company's mailing address is 464 Hillside Ave., Needham, Mass. 02494.
