The Trouble With Crowd-Sourced Content

The Golden Well, Prague

TripAdvisor recently announced its Travelers' Choice Top 25 Hotels in the World, as voted on by its millions of reviewers. Prague's Golden Well is the top hotel in the world, followed by the Anastasis Apartments in Imerovigli, Greece. The United States is represented on the list by Seattle's Cedarbrook Lodge and Baltimore's Henderson's Wharf Inn. Two of my recommended properties made the list (Cocoa Island in the Maldives and the Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur), but they trailed in the rankings to Costa Rica's Los Altos de Eros ("Even kings did not have it this good — perfection") and The Tuscany in Turks and Caicos.

The list, of course, is profoundly silly. It is simply a ranking of the tenacity of various hotel marketing departments. Hotels game the system by sending in phony reviews from their employees, associates and distant relatives (and annoy their guests with obnoxious fliers begging them to write online reviews). Competitors routinely trash each other's properties. Shady PR companies do it all for hire.

I certainly appreciate the collective insight that can be provided by a community of like-minded travelers. In addition to the travel press and referrals from friends and associates, the member reviews submitted to the Harper Travel Office and the Members' Forum are invaluable in helping me to determine hotels of interest, and hotels of concern. Many Harper members take advantage of this knowledge as well, and our new website will make it easier to do so. But when a collective intelligence is telling you that the Comfort Suites at Fairgrounds-Casino in Tampa, Florida, is the 13th best hotel in the United States, then something is amiss.

My formula is relatively straightforward: Pay full rate, don't announce yourself as a reviewer, and write with a point of view. Many expensive hotels open every year, and not all are worth it. Despite my research, I still stay at dozens of properties that I don't bother to review. I don't expect everyone to agree with my choices, but hopefully they serve as a more reasonable starting point for discussion. See you at the Golden Well.

-A.H.