Review sites to be influential in planning process

One thing that I believe may helpful with TA reviews are the contributor tags they give to individuals that contribute alot to TA. 

Over time people will find that reviews by these contributors outweigh the single contributor where the reviewer is either giving an overwelmingly outstanding or negative review. 

I don't think it means things like froders or fromers as they actually come out and stay with you.

I don't know if it means world wide but in the UK we can pay if we choose to, to be rated by Visit Britain or the AA they are the ones who give out say 5 star hotel ratings.

Hotel Business magazine has an article (they don't do an online version) which states that only 1 in 5 trust official rating systems according to new rescearch from Jetsetter.co.uk. It shows that nearly half of holiday makers say they have been let down by the star rating of a hotel and that the rating did not reflect the quality of the stay. However on the plus side the research showed people were 59% willing to spend more on quality accommodation and cut back a bit on other areas. It also states that people feel sites like tripadviser are not fulfilling consumer needs with just 19% saying they trusted reviews  100%. Typical complaints are they didn't like the anonymity of reviewers  with 13% not trusting who has written the comments and almost 20% not trusting reviews without knowing if the review writer shared their own travel preferences and tastes.