Last time you planned a vacation, chances are high you used TripAdvisor to help. Itβs useful and I love it, but understanding the vast amount of information can be confusing. You want to ensure you’re getting the best information, but how do you trust what you’re reading? And how do you make reviews work for you? Read on to find my advice on How to Understand TripAdvisor Reviews.
Why TripAdvisor Reviews Matter
Online reviews, including those from TripAdvisor and Yelp, have a multi-billion-dollar impact on spending. As a tour guide, TripAdvisor reviews matter to me for three main reasons: visibility, bonus money, and job security.
- Visibility: We need the visibility of reviews to earn your vacation dollars. You mightβve heard that most people never make it past the first page of Google search results, and the same applies to TripAdvisor. Being on a TripAdvisor βTop Things to Doβ list is a highly coveted position, and reviews help us get there.
- Bonus Money: Reviews are so highly coveted that many tour companies offer bonuses for employees who are specifically mentioned in reviews, and while it may seem like a conflict of interest to be paid extra for reviews, it does force us to be accountable. We provide a good experience because weβre accountable to our work and, more importantly, our guests. A bad review can hurt, and a good review can pay.
- Job Security: Iβve been personally requested as a guide because of good reviews. In these cases, a highly recommended guide starts everything on a positive note, increasing satisfaction. When theyβre more satisfied, theyβre more likely to leave a review. When they leave a review, Iβm more likely to be recommended. So the cycle goes. This is, in a small way, job security. A tourism companiesβ product is its people, and clients coming back means a good product. Most jobs have performance reviews; ours just happen to be posted online.
How to Understand TripAdvisor Reviews
First, understand that TripAdvisor ranks businesses using their reviews in three different ways: quality, recency, and quantity. Quantity is self-explanatory, but hereβs how to understand and use the other two, with a few additional insights of my own.
- Recency: Start by reading the first page or two (or three). These are the most relevant because theyβre the most recent, and they tell you what people are saying right now.
- Quality: You want 5-star reviews, but you also want a good distribution of higher to lower reviews. The distribution is the spread of both the rating of the review (1-5 stars) and the number of each. You want the majority being 5-star, with a tapering off towards the least common, a 1-star. A good distribution, descending from 5 down to 1, is a sign of quality.
Hereβs my rule of thumb: one bad review is an opinion. A few bad reviews are a pattern. Many bad reviews are a problem.
In addition, here are a few extra steps I suggest to become a pro at how to understand TripAdvisor reviews.
- Check a few 3- and 4-star reviews. Seeing why an experience was not worthy of a 5-star review can help manage expectations for an experience.
- Be particularly mindful of reviews that mention something outside of the company’s control, such as weather. A negative review based on something outside a companyβs control does not necessarily reflect an accurate portrayal of that company.
- Even more important, however, are positive reviews that mention how a company or person adapts to something outside of their control, showing an ability to create positive experiences despite external factors.
How to Write Your Own (Useful) Reviews
I’ve spent years reading and learning from internet reviews, and have been the subject of dozens of them myself. As I’ve mentioned before, my job and reputation do somewhat depend on internet reviews, so I’ve developed a keen eye on interpreting them. After all, you do want to use TripAdvisor correctly, right? Here are a few doβs and donβts of writing your own reviews.
Do: mention your guide by name. A good guide will make it easy for you to remember their name.
Donβt: complain about another company. Make sure you have the correct company before you start reviewing. Good reviews deserve to go to the right business. Bad ones do too.
Do: mention specifically why you enjoyed your time and whyβd you come back. It helps others know what to expect, and it helps that business know what theyβre doing right.
Donβt: give a 1-star review without first talking to the guide or to management. It may seem disingenuous, but the reality is that your 1-star experience was most likely a fixable mistake rather than an indication of the business or person. If you truly feel an experience deserves 1-star, by all means write about it, but understand there are real impacts.
Do: have multiple people within your group write reviews. More reviews, more money, more job security.
Now that you better understand how TripAdvisor works and why it’s important, take what you’ve learned and go contribute to the world of travel.
Have some tricks that you use yourself? Reach out and let me know!
*BONUS: Sometimes internet reviews can be (unintentionally) funny. To see what that looks like, swing on over to “Worst of…”, where I find funny TripAdvisor reviews for your favorite destinations.
Or, check out these other two links:
Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet: a comedy podcast that does dramatic readings of one-star reviews.
Subpar Parks: an artist that creates posters using real negative reviews of national parks.
