Before the internet, taking a vacation was always something of a risk. Unless you could talk to friends, relatives, or neighbors from your Cityplace Toronto complex who had already gone on the vacation you booked, you had no way of knowing whether the services offered were going to be as good as advertised. Today, however, there are websites like Trip Advisor, which allow customers to read thousands of customer reviews before booking any sort of travel service. You can learn more about Trip Advisor here.
Trip Advisor is a website devoted entirely to customer reviews, not a travel agency with a reviewing arm or a magazine which sends reporters out to sample free services, so you can usually trust the site not to push you in the direction of a particular Edmonton laser clinic because they were paid to or because the clinic rolled out the red carpet to get a good review. The reviews on the site come from ordinary vacationers like yourself, so in a sense it's just like talking to a friend who has gone on the same vacation.
However, because Trip Advisor accepts reviews from anyone, there is always the possibility that Niagara Falls hotels in Canada might go on and give themselves positive reviews, or pay people to do so. Likewise anyone wishing to damage a business (a competitor, disgruntled customer, etc.) might post negative reviews. Therefore, you should always take individual reviews with a grain of salt and take an aggregate of all of the reviews rather than being guided by just one.
One of the great things about Trip Advisor is that it doesn't just have hotel reviews, it has reviews on everything related to travel, such as GTA airport taxis, attractions, cruises, packages vacations, resorts, airlines, spas, restaurants, and so on. In fact, you can plan your whole vacation simply by running a search for the city you plan to visit and seeing which hotels, attractions, and restaurants have the highest aggregate star ratings on Trip Advisor. Once your decision is made, however, you'll have to click over to a travel agency site to make bookings.
Trip Advisor is a community and it only continues to function if all of its members both give and take. Therefore, once you've stayed at a Toronto B & B or been to a particular opera, drop by the site and review it for others. This is especially important if you're a special type of traveler, such as a backpacker, woman traveling alone, person with a disability, family with young kids, etc because other people like you might be wondering how a certain place will handle their special needs. It is also helpful to call out any obvious liars who post false reviews.
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