Look before you book as web turns us all into hotel critics

We stayed in a hotel in the city followed by a few nights in a villa in the nearby town of Las Pajanosas. In both instances we based our decisions on where to stay on the views of those who had been there before, which turned out to be a smart move, because we would have

struggled to find anywhere better for the price.

In the past, we had to rely on the recommendations of guide books. But the advent of travel websites like TripAdvisor has turned this on its head, giving ordinary punters the chance to share their experiences, warts and all, with their fellow travellers.

Since its launch a decade ago, TripAdvisor has become an online phenomenon and now attracts around 40 million monthly visitors across 21 countries, including 4.5 million to its UK site.

For many travellers, sites like this have become essential reading before booking a break.

But not everyone is happy. As many as 700 owners of hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs are considering legal action against TripAdvisor over what they regard as unfair reviews.

It appears that opening up hotel reviewing to the masses has come at a cost. As our working lives have become increasingly frenetic so our holidays, those few, precious weeks in the year when we can unwind and get away from everything, have become ever more important.

Reality, though, doesn't always match people's expectations and you don't have to search too hard to find reviewers who are apoplectic because the shower wasn't quite hot enough, or the orange juice at breakfast wasn't freshly squeezed.

There is, of course, no accounting for taste, and herein lies the problem, for one person's palace can be someone else's idea of purgatory.

Not even the grandest hotels are immune from damning reviews. For instance, 11 of the 132 people who have posted a review of The Savoy, in London, rated it as "terrible", while 59 fellow reviewers gave the same hotel an "excellent" rating.

When you're trawling through the acres of reviews it can become difficult to separate the wood from the trees. Adam Coulter, editor of Cruise International magazine, is concerned by the ease with which people can write a critical review for anyone to see.

"In the days before the web you had to write a letter, put it in an envelope and go to the post box. Now you can sit down and fire off a rant online," he says.

"The immediacy of the web means that if you've had a bad day and one of the towels isn't folded properly, you can go online and write a garbled review saying what a bad time you've had. But how often is that balanced by someone saying they had a wonderful time?"

Critics are concerned that people with an axe to grind can write a savage review and hide behind their online anonymity.

In the case of TripAdvisor, all reviews are screened, and specialists investigate those deemed "suspicious", while hoteliers have the right to reply to any review, which many do.

Rochelle Turner, of Which? Holiday, agrees there need to be checks in place to ensure that people who write a review about a hotel have actually stayed there. But she also believes these travel sites have benefited travellers.

"People who are booking holidays can't try before they buy so they want to build up a picture in their heads about whether a place is going to be suitable for their needs.

"Families, in particular, rely very heavily on some sort of recommendation because it's as close to a guarantee as they can get and travel websites like TripAdvisor have been a big help."

The key, she says, is filtering the information.

"North Americans tend to have very high standards when it comes to service compared to people from other parts of

the world.

"So you might have one person saying something is 'horrendous', while someone from the UK might say it's 'quite charming'.

"You do have to read the reviews before making your own mind up. It's never going to be foolproof, but you can't expect it to be," she says.

But overall she believes websites like TripAdvisor have had a positive impact.

"In the past, it was difficult to prove the truth about a place, because you couldn't always trust the marketing spiel. Which is why these review sites give power to the consumer because it forces hotels to raise their standards, otherwise no-one will go."

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