Friday, April 13, 2012

Who's got it in for the Bellagio?

I recently wrote a review for the Bellagio. I believed I gave an honest and helpful review (a totally unbiased opinion of course). So I was disappointed to see that only 14 out of 30 users believed my review was helpful. Since I have received much help from this site, I decided to read other Bellagio reviews to see which reviews were considered helpful so I could improve on my future contributions.





I found some very interesting results. After reviewing a few pages of reviews I discovered that all the reviews that gave the Bellagio a 5 star rating were considered unhelpful, yet the reviews that ranked it less than 5 stars were considered helpful.





Here are the results of the last 15 reviews:





10 Five-star reviews, total helpful votes 40/128 (31%)



2 Four-star reviews, total helpful votes 40/47 (85%)



3 Three-star reviews, total helpful votes 50/60 (83%)







Is there a bias against good reviews for the Bellagio?



Who's got it in for the Bellagio?


I think in general, people are more likely to complain when something goes bad, than to praise when something is wonderful. When good things happen you say ';YAY!'; and move on with life; when bad things happen you stew about it for weeks.





So I think people are more likely to read a bad review and say, ';A-HA!!! I KNEW it was bad....'; and say the review was helpful. It%26#39;s like people are set on finding bad things and don%26#39;t believe it when people have good things to say. Too paranoid, too pessimistic to believe that great times can be had.





People can read 99 great reviews but find the 1 that is bad and think that it must be a bad hotel/restaurant/bar then. Even though that 1 is most likely an exaggeration of someone who was pissed off that the ';$20 trick'; didn%26#39;t work for him. :)



Who's got it in for the Bellagio?


I just read your review and found it very helpful (and voted too). I noticed the same thing with some of my reviews -- I thought I tried to be comprehensive, provide prices, other details, but some people apparently don%26#39;t think these details were helpful




I think you have too much time on your hands.




Who knows why people read them then say they are not helpful. Like Pearl said, maybe the negative people read yours looking for support, and when you said you didn%26#39;t see any wear and tear, they clicked not helpful...



Who knows if people what the people who read it were looking for? Maybe they wanted more description of the insdie of the hotel or more of the room...



Don%26#39;t let it get you down.



I clicked helpful if it makes you feel better =)



I did a review of a small hole in the wall in Kona, Hawaii and was lucky with 3 of 3 finding it helpful.



Maybe just depends what people are looking for....




I wouldn%26#39;t sweat it. In fact- I wouldn%26#39;t even care. You wrote what you thought was important and that is what counts. You don%26#39;t know the people on the forum so you don%26#39;t know what they are like, what their tastes are like, how they like to spend their vacations, what their standards are, etc. Just continue writing what you want to write. Don%26#39;t worry about what others think about your TRs or reviews.




I really should proof read more...I%26#39;d click mine ';not helpful';




ok, I%26#39;ll vote for you.




Just a thought - you spend your first paragraph saying nothing about the Bellagio, instead berating other TA users. That%26#39;s bound to turn folks off to your review.





Which is a good review when you speak about the Bellagio - but there%26#39;s a lot of commentary in it that some people would rather see in the forum.





As for the ';bias'; you see, generally people with good reviews don%26#39;t say that much, while people with worse reviews give details.




I haven%26#39;t looked at your review but I know personally I tend to rate reviews as unhelpful if they only complain about what went wrong, give a short ';yeah, this place rocks'; review, talk about something irrelevant or silly in regards to the overall hotel experience, or in general don%26#39;t provide good information about the hotel itself. Personally, I have never rated anything as unhelpful based on the number of stars the reviewer gave it.




One more vote and jtd gets to be senior class p[resident.

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