TripAdvisor Adds Cool New Feature: “Reviews At A Glance”

[Kaleel Sakakeeny]

From NMT Images

TripAdvisor Adds Cool New Feature: “Reviews At A Glance”

It’s not easy to find

Go to TripAdvisor.
Look for the hotel whose reviews you want to read.
Then follow the wise but “snarky”owl to “Reviews You Can Trust.”

Then below that, on an already busy page, is TripAdvisor’s latest genius stroke, “Reviews at a Glance”

TripAdvsor has made the job of gleaning highlights and lowlights of hotel reviews easier by capturing the most frequently used, relevant phrases and terms written about hotels with 50 or more consumer-generated reviews.

Tapping into the wisdom of the crowd is a very cool idea simply because it saves travelers from having to plow through stacks of reviews, and it enables the time- starved to hone in on those phrases that matter to them: “clean and efficient”; “Great views”; “Don’t waste your money”; “Helpful and friendly staff.”

If the traveler wants more detail or depth, he or she can click into the longer, more complete review and go from there.

The sometimes witty, employee-generated TripAdvisor Blog sites New York’s European-flavored Hotel Giraffe as an example.

The hotel has a terrific rating (4.5/5) and is recommended by 96% of travelers who presumably stayed there.

But to read all 670 reviews is onerous.

So “Reviews at a Glance” surfaces those references that would probably make a traveler happy, comments like “great location” “liked the evening wine,” and so forth.

Cleverly, the box that shows the kind of comments also shows the number of times they occur: “Front Desk Staff” appeared in 8 reviews of the Wyndham Sapphire Beach Club and Resort in St. Maarten/ St. Martin.

But, when you click on “Front Desk Staff,” the term is also highlighted in yellow showing the actual context the phrase was used in and the date it was written.

Nice touch, TripAdvisor, and thanks for asking for comments as you refine the feature.

[Kaleel Sakakeeny]

Good tip! Thanks, David. We always wondered, btw, who wrote them :)
Kaleel

[David Lawrence]

Great time saver but be careful of reviews by "readers". Friends spent weekend in Virginia Beach. Great beach but the reader reviews never warned them about noise from military airport. They recommended Captain George for dinner so my friends went but it wasn't good. So reviews easier to read now but my friends are wondering who wrote them?