Reviews tips

Google made changes to Google Flights and Hotels related to transparency in hotel reviews and pricing under pressure from the European Commission — but stopped short of making those modifications elsewhere in the world.

Michelin announced its top picks for U.S. hotels Wednesday, using its new hotel “key” system. Only a small number of hotels across seven cities made the cut.

Michelin began rating hotels this month, starting with 189 properties in France. Yet many of the hotels that received coveted Michelin “keys” didn’t overlap with the list of best-rated hotels at online review sites. What gives?

Before I got a 9-to-5, I spent a good chunk of my 20s freelancing while traveling out of a van or working on farms abroad so that I could stay for free weeks at a time.

Forbes Travel Guide, a rating system for luxury hotels and other travel products and services, released its 2024 Star Awards on Wednesday. About 340 luxury hotels received “five-star” ratings, while about 1,600 others received other commendations in the 66th year of the rankings.

Airbnb unveiled its biannual set of product enhancements Wednesday, and much of the attention will surely focus on new badges that identify customers’ favorite homes – “Guest Favorites” – and a tweaked ratings page. But hosts will benefit from several other features as well.

Sandemans Tours has partnered with TripAdmit to integrate its digital tipping and reviews platform, TipDirect, across its network of guides in more than 30 cities across Europe, North America, and the Middle East.

Airbnb took several steps to ease the process of onboarding new hosts, increased damage protections, and added a half-dozen new search categories, including trending homes and those adapted for wheelchair access.

Travelers are only modestly more dissatisfied with hotel stays on average worldwide than before the pandemic, according to a review of 6 million user-generated reviews and 20 million online comments. But North America stood out as a region where many guests felt hotels were underperforming compared to 2019.

Tripadvisor is currently attempting a turnaround under a new CEO hired in 2022, and one of the reasons it needs one is Google had used its market power to divert users to sponsored ads and take back the free traffic Tripadvisor benefited from.

Three travel tech companies announced funding this week totaling nearly $230 million.

The classic travel guide is being overtaken on online marketplaces like Amazon by completely generic, AI-written ones — but there are a couple of ways to tell if the guide you're looking at is a fake.

TripAdvisor (SmarterTravel’s parent company) is the undisputed king of hotel user reviews. This week, it begins its quest to attain the same status in the realm of airline flight reviews.

Say you reserve at a hotel that looks nice in its online display, but when you arrive, you find a surly receptionist, inoperative AC, and cockroaches. And say that you report what you experienced, accurately and honestly, on TripAdvisor. Would you then be shocked to receive a $500 credit card charge as a “penalty” for violating the hotel’s contract prohibiting bad reviews? That’s actually happened to a few travelers, but it won’t happen any longer after the Consumer Review Fairness Act outlaws “no bad reviews” language in consumer contracts.

TripAdvisor users can now create and share cruise reviews and photos and compare cruise prices with TripAdvisor Cruises. In a statement, TripAdvisor (SmarterTravel’s parent company) said the new feature will simplify the process of planning a cruise by bringing the hotel, flight, and cruise components together on one platform.