As consumers, we all love a good review.
I diligently read through buyer reviews when shopping for shoes on Zappos, consult my Yelp app when looking for a great restaurant in a new city, and even go the old-fashioned route and ask friends and neighbors for home repair and yard maintenance referrals.
But when it comes to travel, particularly experiential, high-value travel to exotic destinations around the world, as they say “…a traveler does not an expert make.”
We found this article, posted in February 2016 to Medium, to be a well-informed, detailed and extremely accurate overview of the current state of travel-review giant Trip Advisor.
The author writes;
“It’s no secret that most travelers will eventually end up on TripAdvisor when planning their vacation. It has become the Google of the travel world, where people go for honest, unbiased reviews of hotels, restaurants, sights and activities by fellow travelers. Except the information on TripAdvisor is anything but honest and unbiased, and it’s only getting worse.”
She continues:
“While TripAdvisor may have started as a sort of consumer watchdog site empowering hotel guests, I’ve watched it turn into a greedy travel monopoly profiting at the expense of both travelers and small businesses.”
If you’re thinking about consulting Trip Advisor for property or tour operator review, be sure to understand the validity of the content you’re consuming. At Rothschild Safaris, we don’t sell any camp, lodge, property or tour that we haven’t personally experienced. We invest thousands and thousands of dollars to personally travel regularly to the destinations in which we operate. Our travel designers are painstakingly trained to listen to our clients, understand what specifically they are seeking from their travel experience, and recommend the very best option for each unique individual and group. One person’s favorite camp or experience isn’t always (ever!) the same as another’s and planning complex itineraries involves much, much more than meets the eye.
So before you log on to TripAdvisor, consider the source and the company’s corporate objective before reading too much into these reviews and advice.