TripAdvisor Reviews Can Not be “Trusted”

TripAdvisor has been banned by the UK’s advertising regulator from claiming that its users’ hotel write-ups are “reviews you can trust” from “real travellers”, after complaints that the site does not verify its ratings. Full details here in the Financial Times.

One of the biggest issues with the web’s largest travel site is the very fact it relies on anonymous reviews, as we pointed in a previous post: Who hates TripAdvisor? Is there a better way?

While it is good to know TripAdvisor can no longer, in the UK at least, claim its reviews can all be trusted, it still doesn’t solve the issue of where people can fine the best advice online for travel.

OneRecommends.com will solve this issue, providing a place for people to create their own personal recommendations  pages covering hotels, bars and restaurants they love and want to recommend. This will allow their friends and others to research where people they know, trust and most importantly have similar tastes to get personal recommendations.

OneRecommends.com will be launching in the next couple of months. If you would like to take part in the beta launch please sign up for an invitation at www.OneRecommends.com

10 Most Recommended Beaches in the World

Here’s OneRecommends.com’s list of the 10 most recommended Beaches from around the world. OneRecommends.com lets you create your own list of travel recommendations and membership is free you can join here

Plemont Beach Jersey Channel Islands - low tide before 40ft deep high tide comes in

Bondi Beach, Australia. If powdery white sand and dark blue waters are your scene, you’ll like this protected cove. The stretch is about a mile long, and you’ll have to go there early in the morning if you want to claim a spot.

Catalina Island, California. Eighty-six percent of the island is a nature conservatory, and in the 48-mile coastline of this beach, there’s only one town called Avalon. If you’ve been dying for some solitude, this is the right beach to be in.

Plemont Beach, Jersey Channel Islands This beach disappears under water at high tide but 6 hours later at low tide when 40 ft deep water has gone caves and small lagoons are left along with stunning cliffs and rock formations as well as perfect golden sand. Staged part of the MyMemory.com World Beach Art Championship Jersey Beach Art

Natadola, Fiji Islands. Just about any beach in the Fiji Islands is a safe bet. However, the travelers’ favorite is Natadola Beach in Viti Levu. The entire region is secluded and pristine. There are palm trees everywhere, white sand beaches, and beautiful lagoons. The Fijans are also very warm and friendly.

Agios Gordis Corfu, Greece. This beach offers a different brand of experience altogether. Corfu still feels like the Greece of the Iliad. Dark blue waters pool around the craggy mountains of the island. The beaches have a special quality about them.

Petit St. Vincent, The Grenadines. The Caribbean gets overcrowded with tourists every year, but Petit St. Vincent still offers a secluded spot for those who are willing to live without phones or televisions. This is a two-mile beach which can hold a maximum of 44 guests.

Kauai, Hawaii. If you see a patch of green from the plane amidst the sea’s blue waters, it’s not a golf course, it’s Kauai, which is also tagged as a “Garden Isle” because of its lushness. Kauai is the most untouched Hawaiian island to date, and caters to both adventurous surfers and those who are traveling with small children.

Maldives. If you’re looking for a tropical paradise, this group of islands is it. Imagine lagoons with crystal clear waters and beaches that have fine white powdery sand. You also get to live in quaint cottages built above water.

Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Also a white sand beach, this strip is along the Caribbean coast. It’s very close to the Mayan ruins so for beach bums who are doubling as history buffs, this is a good place to be in. The water is warm and clear.

South Beach, Miami. While definitely not a remote beach, Miami’s South Beach has some of the finest, most beautiful people you’ll ever see in your life. The nightlife is wild, too. This is the perfect destination for someone who loves to party. It also has crystal clear waters, rivaling the Caribbean. 

Even Expedia doesn’t trust Tripadvisor!

This is exactly why we are creating OneRecommends.com a better way to search for travel advice and travel recommendations.

Expedia which used to own tripadvisor has put out a statement about its new hotel reviews on its own site which in effect slams tripadvisor.

As USA Today reports “Expedia is making a big bet that online travel shoppers want not just any online hotel review but verified hotel reviews.” 

In effect Expedia are saying people don’t want anonymous reviews any more just as we highlighted in our post about who hates tripadvisor. Perhaps we should have mentioned Expedia in that post? 

Especially when you read John Kim, Expedia’s senior vice president of global products say “We like to call it the new source of truth, internally,” Guess he is not a fan of Tripadvisor!

Anyway there is a clear move away from the anonymous reviews of the past to verified ones as Expedia says but their are still two huge issues the expedia plan fails to cover.

1. A review by someone you don’t know and can’t relate to is as good as useless  as people all have different tastes so just because I love somewhere how do you know you have a similar tastes to me? I may hate the idea of a quite relaxed out of the way place and call it dull and boring yet to you it might be the most relaxing inspirational place you have ever been?
2. People can still use expedia reviews as they do on tripadviosr to a growing extent to push a hotel for a discount or upgrades or they give them a bad review rather undermining the whole point of the review system as you can’t trust the reviews.

While we’re pleased to see a huge name like expedia and former owner of tripadvisor admit the flaws in unverified reviews that tripadvisor is full of their solution only corrects part of the problem.

We are looking forward to launching OneRecommends in the new year. Where you will be able to see places your friends and people you know and trust recommend from a hotel in New York to a bistro in Bordeaux and a Bar in Budapest you will be able to search by place by friend or type of place and all travel recommendations will be from people you can see and compare to your own tastes. For more details please see How to Recommend a Hotel Online

Wishing you all a Happy New Year and hope to welcome you to OneRecommends soon.

Please sign up for early access at www.OneRecommends.com

How to Recommend a Hotel Online

We all love to tell our friends about our trips. Especially when we have a great time and want to let them know about the special places we found. Perhaps a small local bistro in Provence, an amazing hotel with service to die for in New York, or perhaps a bar in a souk that was full with locals in Cairo. (all really experiences we’ve had and want to share).

Your friends enjoy hearing your stories and tell some of their own and you have a great evening. The trouble comes a year or more later when you may be going to one of the places your friends have talked about but which friend, when? The problem always comes, you can’t remember all the great places you’ve been told about and by whom. At present there is no online way to record and share all these great places with friends and others and no way to search our friends recommendations.

OneRecommends.com is launching in 2012 and aims to change this. OneRecommends is set to disrupt the review based way the internet deals with travel. You don’t ask friends for reviews let alone strangers you don’t know and mostly haven’t even put their name to their review. You ask friends and people you know and trust for recommendations as you know the sort of places they like you will like to.

OneRecommends is a free and easy to use service that will allow people to create their page of places inc hotels, restaurants and bars they love and enjoy. They will be able to share this with friends and others plus be able to search where their friends recommend as well as get details on all the establishments recommended in any town or city by total number of recommendations or recommendations by friends or even by how “hot” ie number of recent recommendations a place has.

OneRecommends is set to change the way we search for travel advice online away from anonymous reviews to personalized recommendations. 

Sign up now for early access to OneRecommends.com at www.OneRecommends.com

For travel writers see how OneRecommends can help you at:Why Travel Writers Must Know about OneRecommends 

For people in the travel industry see what OneRecommends can do for you: The Power of Recommendations for your Hotel or Restaurant

The Power of Recommendations for your Hotel or Restaurant

How can you reach customers when 75% of people no longer trust advertising and the social web is only increasing this figure?

People have always been suspicious of advertising but now with the web people can at the drop of a hat check facts and figures and in the travel industry they have access to 100’s of review sites the biggest being TripAdvisor. This leaves hotels and restaurant with an issue. Their adverts aren’t likely to be met with a lot of trust and the review sites seem to have a large sway with customers yet the review sites are full of anonymous reviews many of which can’t be trusted for one of the follwoing three reasons:

1. Establishments are paying for positive reviews to be written
2. Customers are using negative reviews as threats to get discounts or upgrades
3. Reviews are written by strangers who are unlikely to be anything like to you

Is there a better way than adverts or TripAdvisor like sites?

There has always been a better way and thanks to the internet it has become less used by both customers and establishments as until now it hasn’t been translated from the real world to the web. 

Recommendations

We always ask friends and people we know and trust for recommendations when we’re thinking of travel, meals out or even somewhere for a quick drink. We never ask for a review from someone we know, we ask for a recommendation.

We never think I must look up some adverts for where to go, we look for top 10 lists or other forms of recommendations and always from sources we trust and know be it a magazine or writer we know will be of similar taste to ourselves. 

The problem until now has been there has never been a way to see and research where your friends and people you trust have been and recommended without calling them all, not easy and even then trying to remember it all would be impossible.

OneRecommends.com

OneRecommends is a free easy to use service that will allow people to create their own pages of recommendations for hotels, restaurants and bars where ever they have been in the world. This page will be searchable and viewable to others all the recommendations will automatically link to establishment pages. All users will be able to see where their freinds recommend as well as other people they follow such as a travel writer they like or people who work in the industry they trust as well as celebrities and others they respect and value the opinion of.

Establishments will have there own pages that will show number of recommendations and by whom, you will be able to filter these by friends, people you follow or by type. They will also have info, contact details and photos. The amount of recommendations over time will also be recorded to show how “hot” an establishment is, ie it used to get recommended but not much anymore or in the last month has had hundreds of recommendations and is very hot.

A personal recommendation carries 5-6 times the weight of a third party review and infinite more value than an advert to the customer and OneRecommends will be the first site to allow customers to use this power to recommend the places they love and enjoy to their friends and ignore the places they don’t like, so they always chose the perfect place to eat stay or drink in.

To find out more about OneRecommends.com sign up at www.onerecommends.com

Also check out why travel writers must know about OneRecommends.com here

Why Travel and Food Writers MUST Know About OneRecommends.com

If you write, blog, speak about travel or food you need to know about OneRecommends the free travel recommendation network. The most important thing for travel and food writers, whatever medium they use, is to gain and keep readers and OneRecommends can help. People rely on writers and bloggers to give inspiration, knowledge and guidance. OneRecommends allows users to do all this and engage with followers. OneRecommends will help grow readers by allowing users to link back to their own sites/pages and OneRecommends will help retain and engage readers by featuring a follow button.

People who have signed up before OneRecommends launch in the new year will be given the opportunity to have home page listings to further increase the traffic to their profile pages.

OneRecommends is totally free and will allow users to create a profile and using simple tools create lists of the hotels, restaurants and bars they recommend by location around the world. This will all be shown on the persons profile page with several methods of searching. Once you have created your profile page you will be offered tools to share this with your friends as well as your readers and followers on twitter, facebook and other sites. Your page will keep track of visits and you can make this public if you choose as part of your brand building.

Why Recommendations not Reviews?

A fundamentally issue at present on the web is all travel sites are about reviews yet in life we never ask a friend or colleague for a review we ask for a recommendation. Where would they stay, where was the best restaurant they found while there? With OneRecommends you will be able to see where your friends and where people you know recommend but you will also be able to follow writers, bloggers and others you like and admire and see where these experts in the industry recommend.

Every establishment will have its own page that will show number of recommendations and by whom, you will be able to filter these by friends, people you follow or by type. They will also have info, contact details and photos. The amount of recommendations over time will also be recorded to show how “hot” an establishment is, ie it used to get recommended but not much anymore or in the last month has had hundreds of recommendations and is very hot.

For every recommendation you make you will have the option of adding a 140 character reason why and add photos but you won’t need or have to do either.

Next Trip get Recommendations by People You Know and Trust

When people are looking for hotels or restaurants they will be able to use our search functions to find where people they know, people they follow such as travel experts they like and admire and people that have recommended similar places to them Recommend where ever they are or are thinking of going.

OneRecommends is launching in the new year and is set to correct the major problem in online travel research we don’t ask for reviews from anonymous strangers we ask for recommendations from people we know and trust. This should be the same online.

Sign up now for your free page at www.OneRecommends.com plus invite friends once you have signed up and ensure the chance to get homepage coverage for your profile.

Also see why we think this is a better way than tripadvisor for finding the right place here

Who hates Tripadvisor? Is there a better way?

While some people love Tripadvisor and some just like to have a quick look at it before booking a holiday a growing number of people seem to have a real issue with Tripadvisor. We’ve looked at who seems to hate Tripadvisor and why and explain why we think there is a better way to research travel and holidays.

First the groups who hate Tripadvisor:

 1) Hotels etc with bad reviews

This is the obvious group who hate Tripadvisor hotel, attraction and other owners who feel it’s unfair on them as they have low review scores. From a consumers view you’d say why not work on improving your operations rather than blaming the messenger.

2) Hotels etc with very good reviews

The second less obvious group who hate Tripadvisor are hotel, attraction and other owners who have a very good score rating but still hate Tripadvisor. This group on the surface doesn’t make sense, why would they hate something that gives their hotel a very good set of reviews and high marks? The answer and the reason this group is growing is the fact more and more customers are using Tripadvisor as a threat to get upgrades, have bills reduced or any other free treat they can think of.

To understand how this works put yourself in the hotel or restaurants positions, you have worked hard to give great service and you get rewarded with good reviews that help get you more customers. All works well until one or more unscrupulous customers work out one very bad review can knock the establishment down 5-10 places in ranking which could cost the establishment tens of thousands. So the hotel or restaurant is likely to try and avoid this and may offer heavy discounts or upgrades to avoid it even if the customer has no reason to complain.

While this is a problem for the hotels it also means can you really trust the bad reviews any more than the good ones? A recent article in the UK Times newspaper by Billy Kenber highlighted this as a growing issue on Tripadvisor.

3) Customers who get bad advice from Tripadvisor

The other people who hate Tripadvisor are customers like myself who get bad advice from Tripadvisor due to its anonymous and un-targeted nature. This bad advice can ruin a holiday. The problem is people are very different and what one person likes another may hate, here lies the problem for Tripadvisor as the vast bulk of its reviews are anonymous you have no way of knowing who has written the review and whether you should rely on their feedback.

It also comes back to a very simple problem with the basic concept of reviews for travel, do you ever go to friends and ask: “I’m going on holiday to xxxx can you review a place you’ve been to there?” No, no one ever asks friends let alone a stranger that won’t give you their name for a review. So why do we think we should ask for reviews from strangers on the internet and hope it will help ensure one of our biggest expenditures of the year, our holidays, will be better because of it?

Is there a better way?

In the real world we ask our friends and colleagues, people we know, trust and have a feel if they like the same things as us, for recommendations. You never ask for reviews you ask for recommendations.

This is why we started trying to find a better way to use the internet to allow us to share our travel recommendations and advice and then use this to allow us to see where friends and people we know that like similar things as us recommend. Hence we are launching OneRecommends.com, The Recommendation Network for Travel.

We hope you’ll agree with us this is a better way to ensure you never chose the wrong place and love our easy to use and free site when it launches in the next couple of months.

Please sign up for more information and to get an early invite @ www.OneRecommends.com (we will never share your email with anyone that is a promise)

Please also have a look at Why Travel and Food Writers MUST Know About OneRecommends.com

10 Most Recommended City Breaks in the World

Where to go for a weekend break? If you fancy a city break check out our top ten most recommended cities in the world from the team at OneRecommends.com And let us know your favorites? 

Barcelona. This city is a fast favorite among football fans who also like to party the night away. It’s the perfect city for the young. Despite the modernity, though, Barcelona still has enough historical value to it.

Buenos Aires. If you thought New York was fast-paced, the Big Apple is a grandmother compared to Buenos Aires. The night life in this city is beyond impressive with the Latin-American culture mixing so well with the hipness of the young. It’s especially lively during the Jazz and Gay Pride festivals.

Miami. This city just screams Spring Break. With the right blend of sophistication and just pure fun, it remains, hands down, one of the most lively and interesting cities in the world. The coastline is very pretty, and so are the people in it.

New York. The Big Apple has always been on caffeine overdrive. People walk here briskly and there’s always something going on around the corner. If you can’t have your breakfast while crossing the street, you can get left behind. NY is known for everything: fashion, culture, history, food, music.

London. You can literally get lost in this city. It has a rich history with lots of imposing architectural structures to prove the point. The cobblestone streets still speak of what London was when Jane Austen lived in it. Yet, underneath all that, it has the finest collection of night clubs in Europe.

Seoul. This city grows on you in a strange way. The buildings are interesting. So is the food. There’s also a strange beat the young ones dance to called K-Pop. Bars still play retro-80s music. The blossoms are very pretty in the spring. It’s cheesy and hip at the same time.

Paris. If you want a cultural treat, then Paris is the key city to visit. The museums, the architecture of the city and the culture itself is enough reason for one to fall in love with Paris. While intimidating, Paris still attracts a lot of travelers.

Melbourne. This city is casual enough for travelers who like things laid back, but there’s enough buzz through the city’s veins at night to keep the young interested. It’s also known for its fine lineup of restaurants.

Bangkok. Thailand’s capital is every shopper’s paradise. It’s conveniently close to the country’s white beaches too. The sprinkling of temples in the city also makes for a rich cultural show.

Las Vegas. The neon lights, the shows, and the casinos make the city of sin eternally enticing. The vibe of the city is very close to Miami. If it’s any less popular, it’s because it’s more of a guy haven than anything else.

10 Most Recommended Restaurants in Paris

Paris is famous for love and food and you simply can’t leave Paris without going to its best restaurants, but which are the most recommended restaurants in Paris? Below is our list or you can sign up free to OneRecommends.com to create your own list and review your friends.

Le Tournebievre. Locals love this restaurant for its warm and simple bistro interior and the classic French menú. It’s also strategically positioned next to the River Siene so you can dine with spectacular views of the waterscape. Try their gourmet chocolate fondant. They’re also good with their quaint French meat dishes.

Le Restaurant de L ‘Hotel. The dining space of this restaurant is very sophisticated with its olive and ochre scheme. There’s a sky light and the columns are marble. The menu matches this polished quality, and it’s the perfect restaurant for slow dining. Choose from four- and seven-course meals. The pigeon casserole is especially impressive.

Chez Francois. Traditional French cuisine is served in this elegant and modern dining space. They host Jazz nights weekly. There are cigars, wines and special menus bound to impress diners. You must try their large white asparagus with mousseline sauce or vinaigrette.

Auberge Nicolas Flamel. This restaurant has been serving food since 1407, and as a result, is a bit of a monument in itself. Located close to the Louvre Museum, this is the perfect place to go to for a romantic, slow dining experience. Try their seven-hour lamb and grilled ratatouille. Your bill will be presented to you in a tiny treasure chest.

Bistro de Breteuil. You’ll feel like you’re back in the 1900s when you go to this concept-bistro. Everything is in red velvet, dark wood, and ochre paint. They serve traditional French cuisine with a seasonal menu. Expect only the closest and most careful attention to detail.

Bruneilo. This restaurant draws quite a young crowd thanks to its hip furnishing and pop art wall decors. Classy chandeliers light up the room, though. Try their fettucine alfredo and tiramisu. Other dishes in the menu are also straightforwardly Italian and unpretentious.

Fil’O’Fromage. If you’re a cheese lover, this is the restaurant to go to. Order the regional cheese with wine pairings. The dining experience itself is quite casual and very relaxed. The interiors are homey but still, in the French manner, very elegant. It’s very close to the Francois Mitterand Library, so you can drop by here for lunch.

6 New York. This restaurant is minimalist but it does offer the best views of the Eifel Tower. It’s a very elegant dining space but with modern interiors. The menu is quite innovative, too. Try their crab and avocado charlotte with curry oil.

Aux Bons Crus. This is more of a wine bar than a restaurant for fine dining, but with just a short distance between it and the Louvre, it’s definitely worth a visit. The decors of the dining space are a marriage between traditional and modern French art. Try something rustic when you come here like their cheese platter or their confit de canard.

Le Petit Bordelais. Very close to the River Siene, this restaurant is another marriage of contemporary and traditional French sensibilities. The interior is very cozy, and the restaurant specialized in regional dishes. You must try their poached and roasted chicken and fresh truffle.