BuildingWebsiteNews - Online Reviews of Hotels and Restaurants Flourish - New York Times

Many of the reader-generated reviews of hotels, restaurants, destinations and other travel services on the Web may have started their lives as independent blogs by travel buffs. Traditional print travel guides, whether in book or periodical form, are usually written and edited by travel professionals — some of whom regard the growing online travel review sites as interlopers that barged onto their turf like boisterous day-trippers piling out of their Winnebagos and plopping down next to the members of a beach club. Kaufer argued that online sites have advantages over written guides, including the fact that the Internet reviews are often more immediate and tend to be punchier than guidebook listings. Zagat's main business is selling print pocket guides with brief summaries of user-generated reviews of restaurants, hotels and other services. A few weeks before the potential sale was reported, Tim Zagat spoke of the difference between the approach of online reviews and Zagat's, in which thousands of reader-generated reviews are filtered by editors and boiled down to pithy, concise summaries, with ratings tabulated for quality, service, price and the like. Kaufer agree that guides printed on paper, being compact and easy to carry, still have a future in the travel review business, perhaps as components of a far more extensive online product. read more

[Tags]travel, online, reviews, igougo, tripadvisor, review, buildingwebsitenews[/Tags]