On the Road: Hotel Ratings

Tripadvisor Nantucket (Photo credit: stevegarfield)

When I am trying to choose the hotel where I want to stay, I go on sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp to find out what people have to say about their experiences at the hotel. Before I leave on my trip I do my research and make a list of possible places to stay. I try to have a few hotels listed for each city where I could possibly stop and also jot down the ratings for each.

When I read the ratings for hotels, I pay particular attention to the negative ones. They give me an idea of what problems travelers may have encountered at a particular hotel. For example, I was considering several hotels in one city and looked over the ratings. I found that some of the hotels were located near a train track and the reviewers felt the trains disrupted a good night's sleep. I would not have known how close the train tracks were to the hotel had I not read about it in the reviews. I do realize that some negative reviews can be written by rival staff from another hotel, but I also feel that sometimes a few of the good ratings are written by the hotel's employees. They are just one source of information. Reading the reviews on several sites gives me a variety of additional input that assists me in making a good decision about lodging.