A Word of Warning About Reviews

Adventure is a State of Mind

Reviews of tourist locations and activities, restaurants, and lodging are all extremely useful when planning a trip, but it is important to know how to read reviews in a helpful manner.

Negativity Bias

According to research, about 30% of individuals post negative reviews as a way to vent negative feelings. This may be related to the actual experience they had, but it may also reflect more about that person and their personality than it does about the place or experience being reviewed. Customers are also 50% more likely to share a negative experience than a positive one. Some of this may be related to the heightened emotional state of someone who has had a bad experience, but it also may be related to the negativity bias of humans. Our brains are hard-wired to notice negatives — our ancestors who paid more attention to the sabertooth tiger than to the pretty flowers were more likely to survive and pass on that tendency to their offspring. When trying to decide on a hotel or restaurant, however, we can be more nuanced in how we interpret the reviews than our ancestors were in deciding whether an experience meant life or death.

The Truth is in the Details

Reading the specifics of an individual’s complaint, not just whether they gave it one or five stars, can provide you with some warnings as to possible risks and downsides, so consider the details of what is written. Also look for patterns — if only one person said that the service was horrible at a restaurant, they may have exceptionally high standards or it was an off night for the waitstaff. If review after review, however, mentions the poor service and no one has a compliment for how well they were treated, even though the rest of the review is positive, there is a very high likelihood that the service in that restaurant is not great.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Read the Review Through Your Lens

It’s also important to read reviews through the filter of what is important to you. I don’t necessarily care whether the hotels I stay in are luxurious, but I do care a great deal about cleanliness. So when I’m reading a review on Tripadvisor, I don’t care much about the complaints as to how plain the room was or how much they disliked that their window faced the parking lot, but I definitely notice and give a lot of weight to complaints about there being hair in the sink and the floor being grubby. Even if only a few people complained about it, the pattern indicates to me that the hotel does not prioritize cleanliness in the way I would prefer.

Sometimes the narrative contained in a three-star review can be the most helpful because someone choosing to give a middle-of-the-road rating will often provide both positive and negative descriptions about their experience. I find such reviews to often be more balanced and detailed and, therefore, more helpful than some of the more extreme one-star and five-star reviews.

Check the Dates

Something that is easy to overlook is the date of when reviews were written. Depending on the format, sometimes reviews are grouped by how many stars or some other criteria rather than being in chronological order. It is helpful, however, to consider when they were written and whether there has been an overall change over time. For example, you might look at a hotel that has a number of very negative reviews, but if all of those reviews are more than a year old and all of the recent reviews are more positive, this likely indicates that the hotel has fixed the problems that people used to complain about. The opposite is also true. If recent reviews tend to be negative and the only five star reviews are more than a year old, I would suspect that something has changed at the hotel and it might not be as good of a place to visit as it used to be.

When Not to Use Reviews

Although I often use reviews when planning a trip, there are definitely times when I don’t. For example, I enjoy eating at restaurants and cafes that are popular with residents of an area. The online reviews of restaurants are likely to have been written by mostly tourists, and the favorite restaurants of the majority of tourists may or may not be the same places preferred by those who live in the area.

Also, reviewers obviously judge by their personal standards, which may not be the same as mine. For example, one of the best meals I’ve had in France was in a restaurant which served a daily special with no other menu choices. Had there been online reviews at that time (I visited that restaurant during the very early days of the internet), I’m sure someone would have given it one star for not having a larger selection of dishes from which to choose.

So instead of reading reviews to decide where I want to eat, I’m more likely to use my eyes and ears…and sometimes my nose! Greg and I often ask the staff where we are staying or other people we meet in the area about where they like to eat. Keep in mind that sometimes you have to ask the question in a couple of different ways since the locals will often give you a response as to where they think you, as an outsider or a foreigner, would prefer to eat rather than where they like to go. You can also spot these places by looking at where the locals are lined up to get their food or where you hear the majority of diners speaking in the local language or accent. And sometimes it’s just a matter of smelling something so delicious that you have to follow your nose, review or no review!

What do you look for when considering the usefulness of reviews?