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Prior to the widespread use of the internet worldwide, it used to be that if you wanted to travel to a hotel, you had to rely on word of mouth or the Travel Trade Gazetteer. Not so any more. Now, there are that many review sites offering information on hotels, including consumer sites such as Ciao and Dooyoo, and Web Channels such as Expedia.co.uk, which have provision for guest comments and rating.
I have found that while Ciao and Dooyoo have their strengths in terms of quantity of reviews in some categories, unfortunately, do not have the volume of contributions about individual hotels for any consumer to seek reassurance that a hotel can consistently offer a level of customer service consistent with the expectation. Enter www.tripadvisor.com.

TripAdvisor is in fact owned by Expedia.com. They currently hold over 4 million independent reviews on over 200,000 hotels worldwide. While even that latter number is a drop in the ocean compared to the actual number of hotels worldwide, I have never had a situation where I have found a hotel on line, and cannot find it referenced within TripAdvisor.
Although I have used Tripadvisor in the past, I have used it most recently earlier this year when planning my holiday to California. We planned a five day break in San Francisco, followed by a five day tour stopping in 2-3 other hotels along the way.

My first dabblings with Tripadvisor were simply to check on the average star rating and number of comments for a particular hotel, after I had found a hotel (and a rate!) I was interested in via any of the Web distribution channels such as Laterooms.com; Travelocity etc. While the star rating is cumulative, the reviews are shown in date order beginning with the most recent and once you have clicked the title of the first review, the others follow on and are therefore very easy to read. Most reviews are quite short, perhaps one paragraph or two, while the occasional writer will write something that are longer, but nothing like the 2000 word epics from other sites.
In my opinion, the overall reviewers' star ratings needs to be read in conjunction with the volume of reviews submitted to gain a fair balance. I find it is hard to find many hotels with more that 4 reviewer stars (in my price range!), although there is always the occasional gem. Hotels are categorised geographically, and I particularly like to see the ranking of the hotel, compared to other hotels in that town. You can then search all the properties

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