So London has been named the most expensive city for a night out, according to Trip Advisor’s TripIndex

Catherine Henderson enjoys high thrills and haute cuisine in Lake Annecy – arguably one of France’s most beautiful areas

The historic city of York is an ideal destination for a day trip, as Kaye discovers

Catherine Henderson learns how to make some Morrocan morsels in North Africa’s souk city

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered TripAdvisor to rewrite some of its marketing claims following complaints by a whole host of hotels that the site had said that its holiday reviews could be “trusted”.

CD-Traveller reader, Kirti Sharma, is seething over the cost of downloading an app abroad. Read her rant and tips on how to keep the cost down, here

Devon is having a moment. The South West county was recently praised by director Steven Spielberg who shot his latest movie, War Horse, in the Devonshire countryside.

Ever read any of those tips for “hot” holiday destinations for 2012? Do you follow them? Do you believe them?
I have been ploughing through some of the tips from some of the more well-known publications and companies and the thing that I find interesting is that they hardly agree with each other.

Now Christmas is over, do you have an armful of brochures, spend hours in travel agents or watch endless TV ads? According to Conrad Advertising 50% of people who had booked a holiday last year looked at TripAdvisor as part of their research.

CD-Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month, it’s good news for Glasgow and Gothenburg and gourmands in London, but we’ve lost trust in TripAdvisor…

How can you tell if online reviews are true, before booking your next break?

CD Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month, Burma and British Airways’ two new initiatives get the thumbs up but the futureisn’t quite so rosy for Trip Advisor and the Travel Bookshop

It is well known that in the early days of TripAdvisor, some of the hotel reviews were deceptive. They were written by the hotels concerned or some of their friends. Trip Advisor has always said that it tries to weed out reviews that do not ring true.

Hoteliers and just about everyone else in tourism thinks that the Department of Culture & Oddities will withdraw funding from the star scheme, the way that hotels have been independently judged for decades in England.. the rest of the UK is unaffected. The consensus seems to be that review and, to an extent comparison sites, have taken on that task. Why should the government continue to put money in it when private industry is doing the task goes the story.

The number and quality of TripAdvisor reviews has been touched on a few times in CD-Traveller. the mantra is virtually distrust the few, only pay attention to the recent and disregard the overly critical or praiseworthy. In conjunction with UNESCO, TripAdvisor has been trying to raise awareness of world heritage sites and has gathered 244,690 comments on its website about them. This is biggest analysis of what how people view the 789 world heritage sites (there are 911 in total).
So which are the most recommended?

UPDATE:
See the new Charles Starmer-Smith’s piece in the Daily Telegraph, 8th Oct 2010 for another view on how this story is unfolding, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/hotels/8050127/Tripadvisor-reviews-can-we-trust-them.html
For some time, readers will know that CD-Traveller has urged caution in looking at the reviews on comparison/review sites. In the past there has been evidence of reviews written by rivals, reviews that have been scathing and untrue. Equally some companies have written their own which praised to the heights their own offerings. Most are genuine but which do you believe.
Now about 400 hotels and restaurants have banded together as the Cloud Industry Forum and claim that some reviews are false and/or unfair and border on defamation. They are considering a group defamation action.

According to TripAdvisor, New Orleans provides the best nightlife anywhere in the world. We’ve all heard of the Mardi Gras but there are lots of other events that take place in New Orleans most of them free. The rest of the world must think the same because there are more restaurants than they were before Hurricane Katrina hit. The number of beds booked per night is high with nearly 75% of them taken all the time.
One of the best events takes place nearly every night of the year. Along Bourbon Street and the side streets, amateur musicians, some better than professionals, will entertain you. As the evening wears on the music gets better. Or maybe that’s related to the amount of alcohol and the adrenalin that the music gives you.

According to research by TripAdvisor, price is the most important feature in selecting a fare and 85% of their respondents now buy their tickets online which should make travel agents worried.
Here we have some wonderful research that shows how sceptical the average traveller should be about sloppy conclusions like this.
Price is important but it interacts with some other things. The fact that the airline flies to the destination you want to go to; the fact that the airport is convenient to get to and that it goes approximately when you want to go all play a role.

Those of us brought up on Fawlty Towers might find it hard to believe that a Torquay hotel has been named as best for service in the UK and that it has also been listed in the top 25 hotels in the world. Obviously there are no Basil’s, Manuel’s or Sybil’s at the Charterhouse Hotel which has won this accolade.
This award is for service, the most important feature of what we buy after the product itself. Even then you can cope with a product that is not perfect if the service is special. I have stayed in hotels that were not the best. The service, the attention and the fact that nothing seems too much trouble has made ordinary hotels into splendid ones. In those I have stayed in again and again. And recommended

Traditionally, summer holiday bookings begin in earnest just after Christmas. Tour operators, airlines and destinations watch closely to see how many of us go into travel agents or look at online travel sites. And if there is bad weather around then the number of enquirers and bookings rise.
So there are a number of optimistic people around at the moment. The post Christmas sales seem to be going well and some retailers claim this is the best sales period since 1998. Some say sales are up over 18% over last year. The weather is cold and more snow is forecast over large swathes of the country.
So according to all the runes, this should be a good year for the travel industry.

Sites like TripAdvisor have been discussed before in these rumblings. The issues of small numbers for some hotels, biased reviews put up by the companies or their opponents themselves have all been considered.

Last night on BBC’s Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, the man himself was in Brighton, a seaside resort of course, and part of his introductory act consisted of talking about holidays.His thoughts on TripAdvisor (but it could have been any travel comparison website) were funny (as you’d expect from the author of Britain’s highest selling stand-up [...]

TripAdvisor has reported the results of a survey claiming that 79% of us believe that there should be child free areas on planes. Interestingly they asked whether people had children in the first place and of those who had them, a pretty substantial 71% also thought that there should be areas set aside for [...]

TripAdvisor claims to be the largest travel community as is quoted quite widely on travel websites and carrys credence because of the sheer volume of people, millions, who provide those reviews across the range of travel services.Recently, they have announced the results of their travellers’ choice awards (the seventh year of this award) and, as [...]