You’ve no doubt been witness to Idiots That Travel (ITT). The rudeness, unreasonableness, and ignorance displayed by these dumb tourists forces one to wonder if these people don’t return from vacations with raw noses from the epic flicking done by all the locals and fellow travelers they encounter.
Well, it turns out these people are dumb tourists before they even leave home! A survey done by World Travel Market of 1,001 travelers in the UK shows that the most popular travel planning resources are the dipshit user review sites like Tripadvisor.
A frightening 27 percent of ITTs rate Tripadvisor as their “most trusted resource.” Never mind the storied problems of these sites being beset by fake reviews, the genuine reviews aren’t much better, what with so many of them having seemingly been written by the caliber of people that haven’t completely mastered breathing with their mouths closed.
Furthermore, 18 percent of ITTs plan travel using personal recommendations (aka other idiots). A mere 14 percent use guidebooks and another 14 percent go to the actual tourist board websites, which, admittedly, were uniformly awful for years, but seem to be improving.
[Via]
O GOD! I am so tired of people asking me to review them on Trip Advisor and I am even more tired of TA asking me if I give a damn about how many people read my reviews. You want my review TA? Then bloody well pay me, you earn shitloads from me now pay me back!!
I hear you. I left one review years ago as a favor. TA still emails me (to an account I use for junk, but still).
I use Trip Advisor and personal recommendations and although I’m an idiot, this is actually one of those areas that doesn’t display it.
I weight personal recommendations over guide books because guide books are written for whoever by somebody and the people I take my recommendations from are like-minded or at least I know how to assess their opinion.
I use Trip Advisor because single-author (or limited-author) sources, who write a paragraph or two a la what-I-learnt-at-travel-writing-school don’t give the same diversity of info as Trip Advisor. Yes, you have to skim and take star ratings with a grain of salt and weed out the specific details you’re looking for, but this is very doable for anyone used to the internet.
Tourist board sites are good for facts but not at all for opinions.
I do use guide books to an extent, but they’re out of date by the time they’re published.
Obviously some people use Trip Advisor and such idiotically, but I’d say those percentages are pretty rational.
I’ll concede that with the appropriate time, energy, fact-checking, corruption-checking, bullshit-checking, cross-checking and surveillance TripAdvisor could be of use, but for the most part I don’t have the strength to do all of the above. I’m glued to my laptop too much as it is.
Also, I get personal recommendations too, but from select few, trusted individuals. I only know this after years of experience and wouldn’t trust occasional travelers to do the same due diligence.
There should be an IDIOT test before people are issued visas! after all travelers and tourists are seen as ambassadors of their countries! As for TA, I just wish I had thought of that gazillion dollar idea years ago!! ha ha ha I would be flying first class now and letting them sniff my champagne cork! ha ha ha
I don’t spend a lot of time cross-checking Trip Advisor. It takes a few minutes to get the information I want, and I think the trick is to come in with your questions. I travel with two kids under five so I tend to narrow pretty quickly, often based on deal-breaker attributes the guide books and hotel sites don’t think to mention because they’re not important to most people.
I’m guessing most of the people who use personal recommendations only take these from a selected few. It’s not so much about travel experience as just knowing your social network (and yourself).
The thing that frustrates me about these articles (and their responses) is that the reader is not offered any alternatives that they should use, but is labeled an idiot anyways. I’m an aspiring traveler, currently traveling South America and I use a host of sources to get the information that I need, but I’m not afraid to say that I use guidebooks and TripAdvisor from time to time. As the skift article so aptly points out, many travel blogs are not that useful. When possible, I use couchsurfing or my personal network to locate hosts, and then I ask the hosts for personal recommendations, but that’s not always an available option. So what are the alternatives?
My last few trips, I’ve been splitting my pre and on-the-road planning between guidebook chapters and apps. I was late to the game with apps, but man, a well designed and professionally researched app (i.e. not one of the free ones scraped from wiki travel) is a thing of beauty and convenience.
But I see apps ranked low in this survey and I keep seeing articles saying that travel apps are dying. So, what’s replacing them? I, for one, will keeping using them until something better comes along.
And it’s true that many blogs aren’t that useful. But a few are EXTREMELY useful. It’s easy for me to home in on these blogs because I’m plugged into that community. I found an excellent Rome food blog through a friend before my trip in March, for example. But for everyday people, finding these rare, wonderful blogs is a challenge.
Do you have any favorite travel apps that you think are particularly good?
I’m biased, because I’ve authored three apps for them, but I think the Sutro Media apps are outstanding. The interface is the best I’ve seen and they go to pains to find destination experts to author each app. http://www.sutromedia.com/apps.html