Getting advice on where to stay on holiday.

A couple of posts back I talked about giving advice . And then I was on Tripadvisor - the website I am in the habit of using to check out accomodation for our vacations.

Tripadvisor is described as including ”unbiased hotel reviews” which is correct in that it does not include reviews from the hotels themselves. However posters of reviews – myself included – have to show bias to their own experience, expectations, frame of reference, circumstances etc. It is then up to the reader to sift through this to get the information they need. I have chosen many of our hotels based on reading the reviews and so far have been satisfied that I have done the right thing. In fact, a couple of years ago, we actually changed a booking we had with a hotel we had happily stayed in before when we read reviews in which new building work and the impact it was having on the guests was mentioned and otherwise had no way of knowing about ( the hotel website itself did not mention it strangely enough).

So, my husband and I are heading off to Barbados in the Caribbean in a couple of weeks for a short break before Christmas. We have done this for a few years now. This year we chose a hotel based on the ranking on Tripadvisor and what we had budgetted. I was catching up on the reviews last night.

It was fascinating to see what people consider to be vital to an enjoyable holiday. Of course, if you are taking young children facitilies for them would be critical to the choice. Similarly with teenagers or if you have special needs or  limited mobility. What really interested me were the things that spoil it for some people.

Now I want to ask my US based readers to forgive me here but what is the obsession with plumbing in a hotel for Americans? I have lost count of the number of times a hotel has been marked down because of the water pressure in the shower or some other plumbing related issue. Europeans don’t seem to mention this.

The standard of cleanliness and changing of laundry matters to everyone. No surprise there.

Similarly the quality and the range of food and drink and  the standard of service – though I suspect that Brits tolerate a lot more than any other visitors. We are really not good at complaining when it does not live up to expectations!

There are often comments about the cost everyday items.  Much of that will have to do with exchange rate fluctuations. Sometimes it will have to do with the cost of shipping items  that have to be imported. It will depend where you are starting from.

And I have to say that there are times when I am uncomfortable with comments made by the reviewer. One such recent comment about a hotel in Hong Kong was that the reviewer did not think the servers spoke English well enough. Surely when we are travelling to countries where English is not the first language we should expect  to try harder to communicate?

So – there are my observations. I would love to hear what you think is vital to making your holiday/vacation perfect – or indeed what would spoil it for you!!