Travel

#3 travel review alternatives to TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is the resident beast when it comes to user reviews in travel, of which the site claims over 200 million across the world. So that s a useful level of mainstream crowd-sourced feedback for hotels, attractions, and restaurants.

But what if you want tips from more expert, local, individually tailored recommendations for your next trip? Check out these three travel review alternatives to TripAdvisor.

TripExpert offers expert hotel reviews

TripExpert takes the contrarian view to hotel reviews: Experts actually do  know something worth sharing. The idea is that the travel expert s opinion matters more than that of the average traveler, who may present a more biased view.

Given that certain review sites have become repositories for complaints that likely would have been resolved by talking to a manager, the wisdom behind TripExpert is solid. The site saves users from wading through dozens of reviews. Sometimes I just want the expert opinion of someone who does this for a living, and can thoughtfully analyze the merits of a particular hotel.

On that front, TripExpert delivers a simple overall score for ranking hotels while also offering the ability to search for availability right on the website.

Localeur focuses on local perspectives 

Localeur is a personal favorite. I really love how the team has created an alternative to other review sites by focusing on quality content in favor of a dated 5-star rating system that really say much.

Localeur leans on resident experts to share their favorite haunts in different formats, so rather than just focusing on one establishment, listings include helpful roundups, like 5 best mimosa brunches in Austin.

The startup also recently expanded out from locals-only content with its Crowd Recs feature, which surfaces crowd-sourced recommendations of local things to do, see and eat. The mobile app shines especially bright, offering an easy and reliable go-to source for visits to new cities that rely more on local word-of-mouth than a broad, unfiltered cross-section of user reviews.

Gogobot surfaces recommendations via Tribes

Gogobot has been around since 2010, and was one of the first social recommendation startups to lean on the interconnected relationships between people to deliver filtered travel recs. The focus now is on a mix of user-generated and expert-curated recommendations that fit into nineteen discrete groups, called Tribes.

The site has excellent coverage of travel activities, which is made even more useful through the Tribes, which make it simple get advice according to the type of trip you re on. After clicking into a Tribe, you can sort through Featured Guides from experts, or drill down into other user recommendations related to that specific subset of traveler.

The site also offers a question forum, so you can ask for travel advice related to that community.

There are many ways to explore reviews and recommendations outside of TripAdvisor. What are your favorites?