Showing posts with label Trip Advisor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trip Advisor. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Travel Tip Tuesday: The Importance of 'Trip Advisors'

A few years ago a travel agent friend of my mine – after reading one of my posts -- simply screeched, “How COULD you recommend people read TripAdvisor?!?!  That is nothing but people’s opinions!”

VeniceSanJuanIsl 262
Alderbrook Resort and Spa proudly displays its TripAdvisor rating 
No, I thought, it is travelers opinions – many of them so current they’ve been posted within days of their stay and our research.

With TripAdvisor, however, the key phrase is ADVISOR. We use the site to help us make a decision; it doesn’t make the decision for us.

PicMonkey Collage
Hotel Electra Palace - Athens   The pool, our room and our balcony were stellar!

Take the Athen’s Hotel Electra Palace where we spent our last night in Greece, for example.  We booked it while on the road, just a few days before our arrival because of the great -- for a big city – rate of $204USD.

But we didn’t book until we’d checked maps to make sure of its location and TripAdvisor. (We found a 1,000+ reviews of which more than half were ‘excellent’ and another 300+ were ‘very good’.). And those contributing ‘Trip Advisors’ didn’t steer us wrong! We will definitely stay there again.

In the last few years we’ve noted not only a growing reliance by fellow travelers on the website, but a similar reliance by restaurants and guest accommodations on all user-review sites, such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google Reviews

Have you seen the “Find us on TripAdvisor” or “If you liked (your stay, your meal) please write about your experience on TripAdvisor,” notices as you’ve traveled? Stickers on doors and windows, certificates on display?

Pelop2013 294

The growing importance of web sites was illustrated well at this restaurant in Heraklion, Crete.  While it was eye-catching and made us laugh. . .we didn’t eat there because we had another favorite place just down the street.
Sfakia2Amster2013 259

Sfakia2Amster2013 260Another restaurant outside Plakias, on Crete’s southern coast, also boasted of its Trip Advisor recommendations, but we’d decided to eat there long before we noticed this sign.

(You can probably tell by the looks of this vegetarian meze plate why we chose to eat there!)

When planning a trip what resources to you use? Have a favorite 'go to' source you want to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Chania,Crete

If all goes as planned by Wednesday we will be in Chania (pronounced 'Hanya') Crete, where we have rented a studio apartment for a week at the rate of 50E per night at Lefka Apartments (http://www.lefka-apartments.gr/). As we re-read traveler's reviews (http://www.tripadvisor.com/) of the place we are eager to experience it first-hand. We will be slightly out of the picturesque Venetian Quarter that borders the harbor but are assured that buses run regularly past our apartments, so should have easy access to it and other local points of interest.

Crete is the largest and most southern of the Greek Islands and is the fifth largest of Mediterranian islands. Touring the island will take us from the Bronze Age of its Minoan civilization, to Ottoman mosques and Venetian fortresses . . . and the Greek andRoman temples. . .and the sandy beaches and white mountains.

We land at the Iraklia airport where we will rent a car to drive to Chania and to use exploring at least a portion of the western tip of the island during our stay. (We are assured by several companies that we've contacted that International driver's licenses are not required for car rental here).
Next report from on the road in Crete. . .










LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...