Trip Advisor is probably the biggest and best-known of the many sites for user-written reviews of hotels, restaurants, and other travel-related services. I've always taken the reviews with a grain of salt and a large amount of skepticism, but our experience last night makes me think that, in fact, Trip Advisor, and probably most other sites like it, are pretty much worthless. Here's what happened:
We asked the concierge, whom we trust and who has had good recommendations for many things over the 17 years we've stayed at this hotel, if she had any restaurant recommendations in the area; she did, a restaurant at which she has eaten many times and which she really likes. We look it up on Trip Advisor and see that it has an average user-rating of 4-1/2 stars, out of 5. Then we look at individual reviews. Here are the ten most recent ratings and titles:
5 stars (Excellent) "Classic French, and superb"
1 star (Poor) "Ridiculous...French?
1 star "Just stay away"
4 star "Cozy atmosphere, good food"
4 star "Food, ambiance and service, all good"
5 star "The best meal you could have in Paris"
5 star "Absolutely WONDERFUL. Authentic classic French restaurant"
4 star "Saving grace" (say what? but generally a review of high praise)
4 star "Lovely atmosphere, wonderful food"
The next ten reviews have three 5-star, three 4-star, one 3-star and three 1-star reviews.
Now if you can make sense out of that podge-podge, you're a better analyst than I. I used to think the bad reviews were the ones to pay attention to, but now I wonder why every restaurant has such a mix of reviews (and I can tell you the best restaurants - the ones that have almost all 5-star reviews and cost a fortune, also have 1-star reviews along the "worst meal I've ever had" line).
Statistically, a restaurant should have the ubiquitous bell-shaped curve of stars that statisticians love: an average restaurant should have some 5-stars, more 4-stars, more 3-stars than anything, some 2-stars and a few 1-stars. Better restaurants would tend toward better reviews but still have some predictability to the distribution of reviews. Trip Advisor reviews have none of that; they consistently have mostly 5- and 4- and 1-star ratings.
I realize some of the 5-star reviews are the result of "We're in Paris and we're eating a French meal at a real French restaurant with real snooty French waiters and we sure don't have anything like this in Hayseed, Iowa" influence, but that cannot account for the number of "best food ever" reviews alongside the large number of "the food was inedible and the service appalling and this is the worst restaurant in Paris" reviews for the same freaking restaurant at the same freaking time. I also discount reviews with comments such as, "The service was not friendly even though I tried to joke with the waiter" (you don't get friendly with French waiters; they're professional and always a little aloof) or "The meal started badly with the worst mojito I've ever had." Really? Ordering a mojito in a French restaurant? Really?
But even accounting for stupid comments like those, I don't get the crazy and wildly divergent reviews. How can lots of people rave about a restaurant and many others offer detailed expanations of why the restaurant doesn't deserve to be called a restaurant. But last night's research effort makes me think that my approach of paying attention to the bad reviews is no better than paying attention to the good ones. I think we'll ignore Trip Advisor reviews completely.
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