re: How much stock do you put in online reviews

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I use reviews a lot to pick hotels and restaurants, but you need to be able to distinguish between the legit bad reviews and the difficult people leaving a bad review for some stupid reason. As someone else said, I focus on the things that are important to me.

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Good point. My top priorities are service and a quiet room. If you read enough reviews on Google, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor, patterns usually start to emerge. I pay particular attention to the lowest-rated reviews and how recent they are. A hotel’s responses can also be very revealing—some demonstrate attentiveness and professionalism, while others are definite red flags.

AI is increasingly being used to summarize reviews, so keyword searches can be misleading. For example, searching for “noisy” may ahow a positive comment such as, “Even though we were on the street side, it was not noisy.” Meanwhile, searching for “quiet” could bring up a negative review like, “It was never quiet, even after the rooftop bar closed.” Context matters more than the keyword itself.