Like many people, I book most of my hotels on the internet. I also read reviews of others who have stayed at hotels to find out if the establishments have what I want or are near distractions I don't want. Some time ago, I did not enjoy a stay in a relatively inexpensive hotel in Pattaya despite its being very high in the rankings of the site I used. Searching recently for a friend, I noticed this same hotel still ranks very high in that site's ratings, even though there were several very negative reviews. I fully accept that all people have different views, but my radar begins to quiver when I see, say, a couple of dozen rave reviews and half a dozen mediocre ones with little in-between.

 

Looking further at that site's reviews of the hotel I stayed in, I began to distinguish a pattern. 100% of the raves were by 'guests' who had never posted a review before, nor one since. The language used was suspicious in many. For example, one written allegedly by a Thai was in English that no Thai would use, however good or bad his knowledge of English. Plus that site, like some others, has an indicator of how many other hotels/cities posters have visited. These rave posters had visited no others.

 

I will name neither the hotel nor the site. Suffice to say, I faxed the site administrator highlighting the point above and providing a list of reviews which, in my opinion, seemed not to be true - and were probably prompted by an interested party. I have so far received no reply. But today I noticed that this particular hotel has suddenly dropped quite a bit down the rankings and a considerable number of reviews have disappeared. All were on my list!

 

I raise this only to highlight potential problems of depending too much on customer satisfaction reports on internet sites. If, as I will continue to do, you book hotels via the internet, I suggest you pull up several such sites and compare the reviews on each rather than depend merely on one. Or, of course, get impartial advice from this site

Nice thing about Agoda is that to post a review you had to have booked a room through Agoda.

 

One Pattaya non-gay guesthouse owner told me he posts phoney reviews and dismissed it as being part of the game. That's why I place more credence in the negative reviews than the psoitive.

I place more credence in the negative reviews than the psoitive.

That's a very useful rule of thumb.

I logged onto Trip Advisor to post a poor review of a Turkish hotel with unclean bedding (the ultimate no no for me).

One of the other reviews gave it 5 stars for everything, from a guy who lived in the town and had only reviewed one hotel. He even had a picture & it was the guy from behind the reception counter!

Trip advisor removed the review a few days after I complained.

 

Beware of:

1 5 star reviews from someone who has only posted one or two reviews.

2 5 star reviews for one hotel & a severely critical review of a competitor by the same person.

3 Reviews by British/American/Australian (etc) tourists who cannot write English.

 

However, if you are selective there are generally enough reviewers with genuine pedigree for the sites to be useful. I think Trip Advisor is particularly good.

 

In some cases Trip Advisor also has several plausible & negative reviews on hotels also listed on the Utopia website.

Therefore do not assume Utopia listed hotels are good.